


Anything You Need

by Anarfea



Series: Anything You Need Universe [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Bloodplay, Bondage, Breathplay, Caning, Dark, Drugged Sex, Forced Orgasm, Fuck Or Die, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Knifeplay, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Past Drug Use, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rope Bondage, Self-Harm, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Shibari, Suicidal Thoughts, Suspension, Threesome - F/M/M, Torture, Truth Serum, Unsafe Sex, Voyeurism, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:23:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 41,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarfea/pseuds/Anarfea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly told Sherlock, “If there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me.” She didn’t know she would have to prove it literally. Sherlock told Molly, “<i>You</i>,” when she asked, “What do you need?” He didn’t know how deeply he meant it until it was too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Did Say “Everyone”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alma_Anor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alma_Anor/gifts).



> Thanks to Macbeth’s Three Witches of Porn: 3littleowls, Alutiv, and Prurient_curiosity, for helping me refine my mess of a first draft, pushing me to take this fic as dark as needed to be, and holding my hand when I started to freak out about how much of a pervert I am.
> 
> Thanks also to: Britpicker Gowerstreet for preventing me from making an American ass of myself.
> 
> I couldn’t have asked for a better beta team. Any remaining errors are my own and were left in over their protests.
> 
> This is an intense and disturbing story. Mind the archive warnings and tags—additional warnings will be posed at the beginnings of particularly brutal chapters.

Sherlock Holmes stripped to the waist, and, leaning over the sink at the foot of the autopsy table, used the body rinse to wash the congealing blood—not his own—from his hair.  The water was cold enough that his breath caught in his chest and his skin tingled, but at least in BART’s Pathology wing he could be certain that no one would bat an eye if they found “his” DNA in the drain, which could not be said for the shower in Molly’s flat.  She’d offered, and he’d dismissed the notion as entirely too risky.  Molly stood beside him, silent, her face hidden behind a surgical mask.  They would have a long and messy morning ahead of them.

Sherlock scrubbed at his head with a surgical towel, became annoyed at the amount of red left behind, and submersed his hair under the wretchedly cold water again until the towel came away clean.

“Make sure that goes to the incinerator, will you?”  Sherlock folded the towel and placed it on one of the empty stainless examination tables.  He’d come too far to ruin everything by leaving follicles or epithelials in the autopsy suite.

“Of course.  Also check that you haven’t dropped any hairs on the floor, and when you change—” she broke off abruptly.

“What?” His heart rate increased, blood rushing to his face.  It had gone too smoothly so far, of course she would have muddled something, or forgotten something; this was what always happened whenever he relied on someone else to execute part of a plan.

“Nothing, just—I left the scrubs I nicked for you upstairs in my locker, with your other clothes.  I’d go get them but—” she gestured to her scrubs and surgical gown.

“Don’t bother.”  He shrugged his shirt back on and tucked it into his trousers.  There was already blood on it anyway, though surprisingly less than he would have thought.  His coat and scarf had taken the brunt of it; his Belstaff was probably un-salvageable.  He refrained from commenting on Molly’s oversight.  She was risking her career and credibility for him; he supposed he should try to hold his tongue at least a little.  John would—no.  No good would come of thinking of what John would say.  He closed the door of his Mind Palace where he stored all things John.  He needed to focus on the task at hand; getting this part right was crucial, or else all of it would be for nothing.

He stood back as Molly transferred their stolen cadaver from the trolley onto the autopsy table, pulling and shoving to position the body block under its back, writing down the weight on her clipboard.  He’d used Mycroft’s Coventry trick for the corpse; hopefully this individual’s family members wouldn’t go posting on internet conspiracy forums about “knowing human ash.” She walked around the table and took note of the toe tag.

He arched an eyebrow.

“It _is_ procedure,” she giggled  “Decedent is identified as Sherlock Holmes.”

He forced a smile, for her sake.  “Whenever you’re ready.  I’ll signal if you’re getting off script.”

Molly nodded, switched on the voice recorder, pulled the plastic face guard down, and pressed her scalpel into the pectoralis major, making the first diagonal cut of the Y incision, towards the sternum.

He didn’t need to signal.  Molly stayed completely on message, narrating the autopsy exactly as they’d agreed, slicing organs with a bread knife, weighing them, and taking tissue samples with cool professionalism, showing none of the awkward skittishness she usually displayed in his presence.  Sherlock remained completely silent, observing with new respect and appreciation.

He remained silent even after Molly had switched off the recorder, after she’d finished rinsing the last of the blood, packing the organs for incineration and suturing the chest cavity closed.  Only once she had draped the sheet back over the body did he say, “That was—good.  Thank you.”

She removed her faceguard and surgical mask; she was beaming underneath.  “You think so?”

“Yes.  You were impeccable.  Good enough to fool my brother.”

Molly’s brows knit together, and she seemed to be chewing the inside of her cheek, but she said nothing.

It had been, ironically, convenient that he was still the primary suspect in a kidnapping, and most probably in a murder now as well.  It would tie his ‘body’ up in enough red tape to waylay Mycroft for a few hours—even days, if he proved unwilling to spend political capital pulling strings on behalf of his disgraced brother and instead attempted to distance himself, as Sherlock suspected he would.  Molly had been given authorization to begin the autopsy almost immediately.  She had convinced everyone that, no, there was no need to call in anyone who was on his day off; she was a professional, perfectly capable of performing the procedure on someone she’d considered a friend, but would they just let her get on with it and take the rest of the week off afterwards.  Sherlock had, of course, been unable to witness her performance; he’d kept himself out of sight since leaving the scene of his ‘suicide.’  But, whatever she’d said or done, they had been able to complete the autopsy quickly and without interruption.

Molly took off the surgical gown and mask and tossed them into a biohazard container, then glanced at the clock on the wall.  10:48 AM.  “I’ve just got to pick up some more test results, and then I’ll go upstairs to my locker and fetch your scrubs.  Also the spare clothes, phones, and the other things you wanted from Tesco.  I used cash,” she added.

He nodded absently.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” she said, but strain was filtering through her usual cheeriness. He supposed it was to be expected, given the circumstances.  This was the most dangerous part.

She shot him a last glance, lips tight and pursed together, before closing the door.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock drummed his fingers impatiently on the examination table, rolling the rubber ball he’d used to stop his pulse between his fingers.  He glared at the clock again.  11:32 AM.  Molly should be back by now.  He snatched the ball in his hand and began to pace the room, tossing it in the air and catching it with one hand.  He daren’t risk going upstairs to look for her.  The plan had been for him to slip out during the shift change, disguising himself as a diener and keeping a scrub mask over his face while he was under any CCTV cameras.  Not the most elegant solution, but it wouldn’t be the first time Sherlock had simply bluffed his way through a facility where he wasn’t supposed to be.

He ran his fingers through his hair.  It was clear that Molly had been waylaid in some fashion.  There was no way it would take her 44 minutes to go to the locker and back, even if she’d stopped to chat with consoling colleagues while filing the paperwork, or to change her clothes; he’d been telling himself both excuses were the cause of her delay for a quarter hour.

His fingertips twitched, itching to send a text, but of course his phone had been smashed on the rooftop of Bart's, and the broken pieces would be in a police evidence locker by now.  The thought was unsettling.  Someone would be down, soon, looking for the results of Molly’s report.

He heard footsteps in the hall, and froze, ready to duck behind the exam table, when he heard a timid knock.

“Sherlock?” Molly opened the door.

Instantly he knew everything was wrong.

She _had_ changed her clothes; she was back in the tartan print ruffled blouse and dark trousers she’d worn earlier in the morning, with her lab coat over, and she was fiddling with the frills down the front.

“Sherlock, I’m so sorry.” Molly blurted, her voice shaking.  Her eyes were fixed on her shoes; her nose pink, lips quivering.  Not terrified— _guilty_.  “He was waiting for me when I got home.”

“He—”

“Me.  Hi!” The voice in the hallway lilted into a sing-song, giving the last word two syllables, exactly the way it had sounded the first time he’d heard that voice, at the pool.

A rush of adrenaline coursed through his veins; his chest constricted, pushing down his heavy stomach.  This was impossible.  He had seen Moriarty put the barrel of a Beretta against the roof of his mouth and pull the trigger, had seen bits of gray matter floating in the bloody rivulets emanating from his open skull.  His eyes had been blank and glassy in the way that only dead eyes were, and Sherlock had looked at scores of dead bodies, dissected dozens of dead eyes.   And yet, he knew who the owner of the voice was with absolute certainty.

“Do you want to make sure I’m real, Sherlock?  Want to touch me?”

The stuttering, florescent lights of the hallway cast Moriarty’s shadow on the wall, delineating the familiar silhouette of his cleanly cut, mid length coat—and the unmistakable outline of a pistol equipped with a suppressor in his left hand.  He stepped into the doorway, grinning like a shark.

“I _did_ let myself into Molly’s flat.  And she was good enough to tell me all about your little plan once I asked about her 2AM shopping trip.  Clever.”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked to the fire alarm on the wall.

“Bad idea,” Moriarty said, wrapping his right arm around Molly, fingers digging into the sleeve of her lab coat.  His left hand gripped the Beretta, nestling the suppressor against Molly’s ribcage.  “The CCTV footage will be hacked, too; no one can see what’s going on in this hallway.  I didn’t completely waste the time I spent working in IT.”

“He said he’d kill you,” Molly said.  Her eyes, wide and dark, met his for a moment, then dropped to her shoes again.  “He showed me the cameras.  And he said there was an assassin, here, at Bart's, and that if I didn’t help him—” her voice cracked, and she didn’t finish her sentence.

“I did say ‘ _everyone_ ,’” Moriarty’s lips shaped each sound in an exaggerated fashion, exactly as he had when Sherlock had seized him by the lapels and dangled him over the roof of the pathology building.  “Did you think I’d overlook Molly, here?”

Sherlock felt the blood rising to his face, roaring in his ears, throbbing in his veins.  He hadn’t completed Moriarty’s story, hadn’t solved the final problem.  The deal he’d made, the tacit agreement that if he killed himself the gunmen would stand down…

“John—” he choked.

Moriarty’s lips twitched, his dark eyes dancing.  “Yes?”

Sherlock knew Jim wouldn’t give him an answer, would prefer to relish in tormenting him, but anything, any change in his voice, his expression, any clue at all…  “Is John—are they alive?”

Jim giggled, putting his hand over his mouth.  “Sherlock!  That would be _telling_.  And gentlemen—” he pulled Molly to him roughly, mouthing her ear, his tongue flicking along the shell, “—don’t kiss and tell.  Do they, Molly?”  Her body angled away from him, features twisted in revulsion, but she didn’t resist.  His lips brushed across her cheekbone, hovered over her mouth.

Sherlock felt bile rise in his throat.  “Stop it.”

“Oh-ho!”  The lines around Jim’s eyes crinkled.  “Gallant Sir Boasts-a-Lot defends the honor of Maid Molly.”

Sherlock dug his fingernails into his palms with disgust and fury at himself, knowing Jim had succeeded in distracting him.  His flash of concern for Molly had kept him from learning anything that Moriarty’s voice or face might have betrayed about John.  

“Except—” the fingers of Jim's left hand deftly opened the first button on the tartan blouse, “Molly here’s not exactly a maid.  I would know, Sherlock, I had her.”

“You were a lousy shag, too,” Molly interjected, lifting her chin.  The quaver had gone out of her voice.

Moriarty chuckled.  “ _Touché_.  When I said ‘I,’ I meant ‘Jim from IT.’  And he was lousy in bed.  In my defense, I was playing gay.”  He cocked his head to the side and smiled at Sherlock, dropping his eyelids and peering out from under his fluttering lashes.  “And when I say playing, honey, don’t think I didn’t really hope you might call.”  He unfastened Molly’s second button, revealing the top of a gray cotton bra. “But I’m too _changeable_ to be gay.  ‘Picking a team’ is so _boring_ , isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sherlock opened himself to the jibe— _keep him talking—_ Jim liked hearing his own voice and it gave Sherlock time to think.  Jim wasn’t going to shoot Molly; he was certain of that much.  He never got his own hands dirty.  But of course Molly wouldn’t know that.

“You know, Sherlock, I think that’s a lie.  I was wrong about you,” he gestured with the Beretta, “—treasure that, you won’t hear me make an admission like that again—I told Irene you were a virgin.”

“So I heard.”

“Yes, but when I heard about how you handled her, I changed my mind.  I think this _ingénue_ act of yours is all just a big tease.   You know more than you let on about sex, and you’re not above using it to get what you want.  Take for instance—” he ran his hand lasciviously over Molly’s clothed breast, down to the curve of her hip, his fingers tracing along the waistband of her trousers.  “—poor Molly, here.  Why, you’ve positively exploited her, played on her feelings, leveraged your good looks, your charm.”

“No he hasn’t.”  Molly set her chin forward and curled her fists into balls at her sides.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Jim whispered into her ear, stroking her hair absently with his free hand.  “Really I am, but I’m afraid he has.”  His eyes bored into Sherlock’s, and his voice was suddenly fierce.  “And he’s going to tell you all about it.”

So that was the game, then.  Of course.  He should have seen it.  His only remaining ally, his one sympathetic ear, the only person who cared whether he lived or died who didn’t think he was dead, and Moriarty intended to turn her against him.

He bitterly regretted not having confided in Mycroft immediately.  He’d been livid with his brother after reading Kitty Riley’s revolting “tell all.”  His childhood humiliations, adolescent indiscretions—Mycroft had doled them out to Jim like dog treats—rewards for good behavior.  Sherlock had intended to tell his brother everything shortly, of course—to ask, no, demand, that Mycroft provide him with several forged passports and cash in small denominations and a variety of currencies.  He was owed, and Mycroft knew it, would give him anything he asked for, now.

All he’d wanted to was to twist the knife just once—to make Mycroft feel, even if it was only for an instant, what Sherlock had felt on the rooftop, when he’d tossed his phone aside after saying goodbye to John, inflicted the wound he’d had to because his brother had forced his hand.  And now—

_This petty feud between us is simply childish. People will suffer._

“I’m sorry Molly,” Sherlock met her gaze, levelly, his voice even.  “I should never have involved you in this.”

She shook her head.  “I asked you what you needed, and I knew—what you might need.”  

 _That I might die._  The force of the deduction staggered him.  Molly had written: _There’s this man and I love him.  At least, I think I do_ , on that ridiculous blog of hers, which Sherlock had read once ‘Jim from IT’ had revealed himself as James Moriarty—but he’d assumed that what Molly called ‘love’ was infatuation.

He’d known it was more than that when he’d come to her at the lab, when she’d stood, arms open, and asked him what he needed, but there was a world of difference between what he’d asked of her then and what she was offering him now.  He thought of John, gripping Moriarty in a headlock at the swimming pool.  He always missed something.

The silence between them was broken by a snap of Jim’s fingers.  Sherlock blinked.

“This has all been very touching,” Moriarty deadpanned, “but I think it’s time we move this party to a more suitable locale.”

The click, which the bar on the emergency exit door made when it opened, took Sherlock by surprise; he hadn’t heard any noise from outside.  He turned over his shoulder to see who had managed to get the drop on him, and saw a slightly built man with ash brown hair and a navy pea coat standing in the doorway.

“Sherlock, Sebastian Moran.  Sebastian, Sherlock Holmes.”

The man stepped into the hall, and Sherlock noted that despite his slender build, he moved with an easy grace and a casual sense of self-confidence that said ‘fighter.’  The way his coat fell indicated he was wearing a holster with a concealed side arm.  He held a garment bag over his left shoulder.

“I brought you a change of clothes, Sherlock.”  Jim drawled.  “I saw the assortment of Tesco brand poly-cotton blends Molly had stashed in her locker; trust me, you want no truck with that.  But, your current outfit, dapper as it is—love the bloodstains—needs to be turned in as evidence, or people might ask questions, and we can’t have that.  It’s so terribly _convenient_ , you being dead.  Normally when you abduct people, you have to worry about their friends and family noticing they’re gone.”

“Molly, love,” he said flatly, “be a dear and go upstairs and turn in the paperwork you and Sherlock forged together.  Tell me what happens, if you in any way alter the documents, or breathe a word to anyone?”

“You make Sherlock into shoes,” she muttered, staring at hers, and then turned and nearly fled the hallway.

Jim grinned.  “Right, then,” He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of black latex gloves, snapping them as he pulled them on to his wrists.

“Let’s get those clothes into police evidence, shall we?  I do so look forward to watching your brother’s face on the CCTV footage when Lestrade turns over your personal effects.”


	2. But Did You Listen?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s lots of rope bondage in this chapter. There is some terminology which is not defined (though I've tried to write it so that it is not necessary to be familiar with these terms to “see” what's going on). However, if you would like some definitions, or just want to find out more about rope bondage in general, I've attached a link to some [basics](http://www.shibaricon.com/registration/handouts/rope.pdf).

Jim pointed at the high backed chair sitting in the middle of the derelict factory—an antique number with clawed feet and plump maroon leather upholstery—and Moran poured Sherlock into it.  His gangly legs fell over one armrest, and his still hooded head dangled over the other.  Sherlock would expect to be bound and gagged and tortured, and Jim made a habit of not doing anything that was expected of him—well, at least not right away.  He made another gesture, and Moran removed a KA-BAR knife from his belt, slit the zip cables trussing Sherlock’s wrists and ankles, and pulled the pillowcase off his head.  Sherlock pushed himself up with his elbows and twisted his torso into a seated position, leaned into the back of the chair, rubbing his wrists.  His bent legs were still draped over the armrest.  Jim felt the right side of his mouth twitch.  Sherlock was just so _fetching_.

“This,” he swept his hand through the air above Sherlock’s body, “is exactly what I was talking about.”

“What?” Sherlock intoned in his cool baritone, leaning back into the leather.  Jim had raided Sherlock’s flat and commandeered the black suit and white, pleated shirt Sherlock had worn when Jim had invited himself over to 221B for tea.  Then, as now, the way the buttons strained when Sherlock puffed himself up in the chair made his mouth dry.

“The flirting, honey, you’re shameless.”  He took a hold of Sherlock’s shoes— _Yves Saint Laurent, classy_ —and pulled his legs around to the front.  For a single, heady moment, he contemplated putting Sherlock’s knees over his shoulders and pressing him into the chair—but no, it was too soon.  Jim dropped Sherlock’s well shod heels to the concrete floor with a dull thwack.

Sherlock sniffed, as though perturbed, and straightened in the chair, arranging his forearms over the armrests, but Jim knew his attention was elsewhere—behind him, on the rubbish and puddle strewn floor of the abandoned building, on the afternoon sunlight streaming through the floor to ceiling rows of windows.  He probably knew where they were; a pillowcase and being locked in the boot of a car wouldn’t have stopped that internal GPS of his from estimating mileage and memorizing turns.  Not that it would help him.

“Let’s get started, shall we?”  Jim turned a quick pirouette and strode between two waist-high tables flanking either side of a portable scaffolding tower.  The first held hanks of rope, which were organized by diameter and length, alongside other assorted restraints.  On the second, he had arranged his toys, the props for the show he was preparing for an audience of one.  Well, two, if he counted Moran, but Jim didn’t.  The sniper had moved to a crumbling observation deck at the side of the building, where management must have overlooked the line when the factory was in use.  He’d assembled the AWC and was attaching the suppressor.  Sherlock’s eyes flitted over him, taking in everything.

Jim picked up a sealed packet containing a clean syringe and an injection vial from the table.  He gave the vial a shake.  “Know what this is?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “I know you want to tell me.”  There was an edge to his voice which was supposed to sound like annoyance, but to Jim’s experienced ear there was an undercurrent of fear.  Delightful.   He tossed the vial to Sherlock, who caught it with one hand, turned it over, and read the label.

“Pentothal.”

“Go on.”

Sherlock arranged his features into bored expression.  “Trademark.  The drug is sodium thiopental.  You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble to bring me here alive, so I doubt you’re about to administer a lethal injection.  The drug can be used to induce a medical coma, but you’ve set up a little stage here—complete with a set of theater lights—which suggests you want me to watch a performance; comatose patients make poor spectators.  Regrettably, I’m forced to conclude you mean to use it as a ‘truth serum,’” he raised his eyebrows with contempt, “—which is disappointing, as you ought to have known I’m hardly an ideal candidate for that sort of endeavor.  The best defenses against narco-interrogation are: foreknowledge that one is going to be drugged, and an understanding of how the drugs work.  I have both of these, and additionally I’ve built up a tolerance to barbiturates in general, so success is unlikely.”

“I love it when you do your deduction thing, Sherlock, it’s always sexy.”  Jim pointed the index finger of his free hand at the building’s bay doors, and Moran flipped a switch on the observation deck that opened them.  “Unfortunately, it’s not as impressive when you make a flawed assumption.”  He pulled the sides of his lips into a wide, open-mouthed grimace and put his hand in front of his face, like a clown showing his audience he’d made a _faux pas_.

The back of Sherlock’s chair faced the door, so he couldn’t see the figures when they entered.   Still, he figured it out when the three sets of footsteps clicked across the floor, and his lips parted, nostrils twitching with apprehension, pupils contracting.  He looked like a startled animal scenting the air.  Whatever shrink had diagnosed Sherlock as a sociopath was incompetent; he felt all kinds of emotions, and he displayed all of them on his expressive features—writ small, but starkly visible to Jim’s sharp eyes.

“Really Sherlock, I don’t know how you deduced that I wanted you to watch, while still assuming that this was for you,” he snatched the vial of Pentothal back and slipped it into his pocket, and oh, the expression of helplessness was priceless; Sherlock looked like a mewling child forced to give his lunch money to a schoolyard bully.  Jim remembered was that was like, from both ends.

“I promised you a fairy tale, Sherlock.  And what’s a fairy tale without a damsel in distress?”  He turned towards Roberts and Evans, the other two assassins he’d retained to assist him with the Final Problem.  Each of them had an arm looped through one of Molly’s.   Her hands were bound in front with a zip cable as Sherlock’s had been, but they’d left her feet free so she could walk between them.  Strands of her mousy brown hair protruded from underneath the pillowcase.  The three of them walked, arm in arm, and stopped at a point halfway between where Jim was standing and Sherlock’s chair.

Sherlock swallowed, his eyes narrowing as they moved rapidly over the three figures.  Jim knew exactly what he was thinking: _Do these assassins look like they just executed all my friends?_  He frowned.  Or maybe he was thinking: _Oh no, what are these bad men going to do to Molly?_  Uncertain, that, which was why he’d chosen Molly Hooper in the first place.  He’d already seen at the pool, and again on Bart’s rooftop, that Sherlock would do anything for John, which made that option boring.  Sherlock’s relationship with Molly was more nuanced.

He paused to observe Molly, who stood before him in her frumpy clothes and her pillowcase hood.  “Scissors.” Jim stretched his hand out expectantly.

Evans found them on the other table and handed them over.  Jim ripped the tartan blouse from bottom to top, one of the buttons flying off in the process, and proceeded to cut through the sleeves, shucking them off Molly’s shoulders.  Molly started, but her chest was held high; her weight was balanced evenly over her sensible shoes.  The sight was suddenly intriguing.  This had been about him and Sherlock—he hadn’t really thought about Molly, except to wonder what Sherlock thought of her.  But it seemed she wasn’t the shrinking mouse he’d remembered after all.  A slow smile spread across his face.

Even with his back to Sherlock, Jim could feel the man’s pale, alien eyes, boring into the back of his skull.  He ignored them.  He busied himself with unhooking the closure of Molly’s trousers and pulling them over her bony hips.  They were cut sloppily, and fell straight to her homely shoes, exposing white cotton knickers patterned with tiny bullfrogs that didn’t coordinate with her gray T-shirt bra.  He chuckled.

“If you’d kept seeing me, Molly, I would have bought you some decent lingerie.”

“Yes, well, we can’t all wear posh gay underwear,” she quipped.

Jim would have laughed at that, but Sherlock barely suppressed a chuckle, so he backhanded Molly instead.  The pillowcase blinded her to the incoming blow, and she stumbled backwards, collapsing into Roberts’s meaty, tattooed arms with a cry.  Sherlock, ever the quick study, went mute immediately.

Tying her up could have been more fun than it was going to be.  Jim considered himself something of a master rigger, and nothing motivated him like an audience.  Now was not the time, however, for sadistic predicament bondage or intricate, aesthetic ties.  His goal was to keep Molly in suspension as long as possible, to create a feeling of weightlessness that would distract her, and for that, he needed to cause minimum discomfort.

He pulled Molly from Robert’s arms, nudging her trousers over her shoes with his toes, and clipped the zip ties binding her wrists neatly with the blunt tipped bondage scissors.  “Give me your hand,” he said, taking her fingers in his and positioning them palm outward, elbow bent, approximately a foot from her sternum.  “Do.  Not.  Move.”  He punctuated each word with a poke between her breasts.

Jim went to the table and selected his first hank of rope.  He was a purist, so all of it was hemp.  And he intended to tie Molly comfortably, so he segregated his hanks of 30 ft 6 mm.  He picked up the first one, pulled the bight free, and let the hank tumble through his fingers.  He made a loose lark’s head knot and slipped it over Molly’s body like a lasso, and forced her to hold the bight with her thumb while he wrapped the rope over her outstretched palm, under her arms, across her shoulder blades, and back again, working slowly to keep the wraps flat and even.  When he ran out of working rope, he made Molly hold the wraps taut while he bound them off and started a new length.  The tension on Molly’s arm was making her tremble; her muscles would be burning, and the hood reduced her world to apprehension, darkness, and strain.  As he circled behind her to lay down his second layer of rope, Jim met Sherlock’s narrow, homicidally dark eyes across the room and smirked.

He locked off all the wraps with a shorter length of rope and released Molly’s hand—she dropped it limply to her side, fingers trembling—and threaded the working ends through the suspension ring he’d hung from the scaffold and back down to the bight again, securing everything with neat knots.  The result wasn’t so much a proper chest harness as a cradle, which ran beneath her shoulder blades and snugged up against her armpits; the many wraps created a wide sling which should easily support her torso.  Jim had left almost a foot of slack between her chest and the bight.  This wasn’t his preference from an aesthetic perspective (the ropes made no contact with her breasts) but it would keep her binds from compressing her chest once she was in suspension.

To put some tension on the sling, he walked Molly backwards until the ropes were taut.  She stumbled and swayed, her equilibrium thrown off by the hood.  Jim rotated her to face the chair where Sherlock sat, moving behind her to adjust the wraps, evening the tension.  Sherlock leaned forward, hands gripping the armrests, knees balanced over the balls of his feet, which were arched against the concrete.  A few beads of sweat had formed on his brow.

“Stay,” Jim whispered, brushing his lips against Molly’s nape.  He moved in front of her, dropping into a crouch.  Working quicker now, he spread Molly’s knees and used more ropes to create a hip-thigh harness.  He wrapped each leg separately, and then crossed the ropes behind her back and over the opposite hip before locking them off, creating a pair of twin anchor points at the top of each of her thighs.  Her ridiculous knickers ruined the image, which was supposed to be of a series of diamonds framing her cunt, but he left them in place.  Next, he separately bound her lower thighs, avoiding the delicate flesh and nerve clusters behind her knees.  When he threaded the long rope through the suspension ring and brought her leg up, she lost her balance entirely; he caught her by sliding his arm under her arse and bent her back fiercely like a _tanguero_ executing a dip, planting a kiss in her cleevage.  She shuddered, and he ran the working length of the rope under the hip-thigh harness, locking it, and her leg, in place.

Her body had rotated in the ropes, and he brought her to face the chair again while he repeated the tie on her other leg, in order to give Sherlock a spectacular view when he tensioned the rope, and, using the suspension ring as a pulley, ratcheted her legs up and open.  After he secured the second line to her hip, Molly was suspended as though she were seated in an invisible hanging chair, with her entire torso from the breasts down, as well as her thighs and everything in between them, readily accessible.  Her cunt was approximately level with Jim’s hips, and he pulled the ropes to further open her legs, moving to stand between them.  Molly shook her hooded head when he slipped his hands between the suspension lines and cupped her arse, rocked her back and forth against his groin suggestively.  Sherlock hissed at him, and Jim grinned and dropped her.  She swayed back and forth like a child on a playground swing, her unbound arms dangling loosely behind her back.

He crossed to the table and picked up a rubber tourniquet and a fresh syringe, breaking the seal on the packet and removing the plastic needle guard.  He took the bottle of Pentothal out of his pocket and pushed the needle into the bottle’s rubber stopper, turning it upside down in his hand as he pulled the plunger back.  He picked up Molly’s left arm and pulled the tourniquet tight, taping her median cubital vein.  Sherlock’s nostrils flared wide, but his eyes flashed to Moran, perched in the observation deck, and he said nothing.  

Jim squirted a bit of fluid out of the syringe, measuring carefully.  He didn’t want Molly comatose or completely incoherent.  Expertly, he slid the needle into her vein and pulled the plunger until it flashed.  Short, sharp gasps emerged from under the pillowcase, which conformed to the contours of Molly’s lips as she sucked in breath through the dark fabric.  Jim clenched the pillowcase tightly behind her head and pressed his mouth over hers with the hood between them.  Molly made a startled, choking sound, and he broke the kiss, circled behind her, and slowly removed the pillowcase.  She gasped for air, jerking her head from side to side, opening and closing her lips like a trout flopping on a riverbank.

Sherlock clawed the armrests of the chair with his nails, his whole body tight and angled forward, his breaths drawing the pleated fabric of his shirt tight across his chest.  His eyes were feverishly bright; his thick brows knit tightly together.  Jim stared him down.

“Count back from 100, darling,” he whispered in Molly’s ear, depressing the plunger slowly.  To his surprise, she obliged, but her voice soon became garbled, which was his cue to pull the needle out and loosen the tourniquet.  He laid a soft kiss on her forehead as he did so.  Jim straightened his back and turned towards Sherlock, tossing the syringe, tourniquet, and empty vial into a bin under the table.  He turned back to Molly’s suspended legs and unlaced her ugly shoes, tossed them in the bin as well for good measure.  Lastly, he removed her socks; he intended to make Molly’s toes curl, and he wanted Sherlock to see it.

“So here’s how this is going to work.  You’re right, narco-analysis isn’t actually reliable if you’re trying to ferret out specific information—a key code, say.” His eyes were dancing.  “The subject can provide unreliable intel, sometimes just because they’re confused, but they can even lie, if they’re savvy enough.  But this isn’t an interrogation—more of a chat.”  He patted Molly’s hair, hopelessly tangled from the pillowcase.

“Molly is going to become—disinhibited, shortly.  I intend to take advantage,” a smile played over his lips, “and ask her some personal questions.”  Jim picked up a short length of rope and folded Molly’s hands over the softness of her belly, tying her forearms loosely, more for the principle of finishing the tie than restraint.  “Then I’m going to ask you some follow-up questions.  I’m not going to drug _you_ —you’re right, probably wouldn’t work, plus I like seeing all the wheels in your brain turning at full speed, and Pentothal tends to slow that down.  So there will be other incentives for you to answer me truthfully, and the best part is, I get to be the judge of whether or not you’re lying to me.”

Jim walked behind Molly and put his hands under her head, which had lolled backwards; the drugs had taken effect.  He gently massaged her scalp with his fingers and pressed his lips to her ear.

“Tell me a secret, Molly,” he whispered.


	3. Say That Again

Molly was floating.  Somewhere, far away, was a part of her that knew that something terrible was happening to her, or to Sherlock.  Even further away was the knowledge that there was something she needed to protect.  But at the moment, there was a dull warmth in her veins, a heaviness in her limbs.  Her neck was like a noodle; her head was being cradled, and the tension was dissolving from her shoulders.  She could fall asleep like this—reclining in a hanging chair on a summer afternoon, an open book across her chest.  Her arms were folded over it, paper scratching her bare skin.

“Tell me a secret, Molly.”

She opened her eyes.  Jim was leaning over her, his face taking up her whole field of vision.  “I could kill someone.”  The words tumbled out of her.  “I know all the signs of foul play.  I could hide them all.  I’d get away with it, I’m sure.”

Jim’s laughter echoed around them.  “That’s my girl!”  It was Jim, wasn’t it?  His smile crinkled the flesh around his eyes, the way it had on their first date, coffee at the canteen at Bart's.  He’d bought her favorite pudding; she’d been so impressed he’d noticed it was her favorite.  He had been observant, like Sherlock, except that Sherlock never noticed anything about Molly.  Well, nothing good, anyway.

“Molly the murderess,” he whispered in her ear.  “Has a nice ring to it.”

This was silly.  He wasn’t Jim, wasn’t the bloke who who’d taken her to the Fox and fumbled for her hand in the cab durring their ride home, who’d kissed her at her door, sloppily and with too much tongue, whom she’d taken to bed, even though she didn’t usually do that after three dates, to prove that Sherlock had been wrong, Jim wasn’t gay, he hadn’t just been using her to get a chance to slip Sherlock his number.  He’d been so clearly unenthusiastic that she’d confronted him about it.  They’d had a terrible row, and then Jim stormed out of her flat.

Molly had ended up curled against the fridge with Toby and a pint of sherbet.  Sherlock had been right: she _had_ gained three pounds, her boyfriend _was_ gay—he’d been more interested in Sherlock than Molly, not that she had blamed him.  Sherlock was always right.  Except he’d been wrong, hadn’t he?  Jim said he wasn’t really gay, after all.  It should have felt good, Sherlock being wrong about something, but it only made tendrils of fear creep around the dark edges of her mind, outside the circle of warmth and light created by the drugs.

“Tell me something else, Molly.  When did you know you wanted Sherlock?”

“The first time he did his deduction thing over a corpse.  I liked the way he looked at the body.  He looked at it the way I look at bodies.”  She knew what she said was socially unacceptable, but it wasn’t like when she got tongue-tied in front of Sherlock and said inappropriate things and he told her conversation wasn’t her area.  When she did that, it was because she was struggling hard to say the right thing and the words got twisted up on her tongue.  Just now, she’d known she was saying the wrong thing; she just hadn’t cared.  It was the Pentothal.  Molly knew that—she wasn’t an idiot, she was a _doctor—_ but it didn’t change anything.  The words poured out of her, unbidden.

“How do you look at bodies, Molly?”

“I look for information.  What they were like, how they died.  People lie to you with their mouths, but not with their bodies.  Not when they’re dead, anyway.”

Jim was working his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp, and she sighed. “You saw Sherlock looking, observing, adding up all the details.”

“Yes, and his eyes were so beautiful.”

Jim chuckled into her ear.  “I know.  You should see the way he’s looking at you now.”

He lifted her head with his hands and directed her gaze where he wanted it.  Sherlock was leaning back in a leather armchair, his arms folded across his chest.  His eyes were narrowed, and he’d pressed his normally full lips between his teeth until they were white.

“Sherlock only sees flaws when he looks at me.”

“Oh?”  She felt Jim’s hot breath on her neck.  “What kind of flaws?”

“He said my breasts were too small.  And my mouth.”

Jim’s lips formed a slow ‘O’ of surprise.  “Really?” He stared at Sherlock.  “How positively _unchivalrous_ of him.”

He let go of Molly’s head, and her neck rocked backwards.  She could see the two men behind her.  One was huge, his arms covered in tattoos.  The other had a compact, soldier’s build, with close cropped hair.  Both were standing with their arms folded behind their backs, guns at their hips.  It occurred to her that she should be afraid, but the threat didn’t seem real; it was like watching a pair of hyenas stalk a zebra on a nature show.  She closed her eyes.

“What _exactly_ did you tell her, Sherlock?”  The tone of Jim’s voice had changed.  There was steel in it that hadn’t been there when he’d spoken to Molly.

“I—” Sherlock hesitated.  Sherlock never hesitated.  “I believe she’s referring to what I said at our Christmas party.  She was wearing red lipstick and a padded bra with an overly tight dress.  I said she was trying to compensate for the size of her mouth and breasts.”

Jim snorted.  “Charming, Sherlock, just charming.”  He turned towards Molly.  “Let me say dear, that I think you have absolutely nothing to compensate for.”  She felt his fingers walking up her torso, and her eyes flew open.  He slid both his hands into the cups of her bra, and took her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers and tweaked them.  She gasped.  Pentothal wasn’t an analgesic; the drug lowered her inhibitions and gave her a sense of well-being, but did nothing to decrease the sensation of pain. “Sherlock, dear,” Jim walked around Molly and put his hands under her head again, taking the strain off her neck.  “Why would you have made a comment like that?”

Sherlock crossed one of his ankles over his knee into a numeral four position, leaning further back in his chair.  “Christmas is insipid.  The house was overrun with people drinking and ‘merrymaking’ and pretending their relatives don’t drink and their spouses aren’t philandering in the name of holiday cheer.  I felt the atmosphere could do with a little honesty.”

Jim let go of her head, and her neck lolled back again.  Molly was still incapable of supporting its weight on her shoulders.  She felt like an infant, requiring a caretaker to support her head so she could look round.

“Remember what I said, Sherlock, about there being consequences if you lie to me?”

“I’m not lying.”  Sherlock’s voice was flat, even, but even Molly could hear the tension underneath it, so she was sure Jim heard it, too.

“I don’t doubt it, but you’re not telling the whole truth, either.” Molly was vaguely aware of Jim leaving her side, crossing towards the table, then coming back again.  He seized her ankles and pulled them together and upward, wrapping his arm around her calves.

“Let’s try this, AGAIN!” Jim’s voice became a scream, and the air around Molly whistled and then there was a sharp crack; a line of fire burned across her thighs.  She cried out, eyes squinted shut, and jerked in the ropes, arching her back as the heat sank deeper, under her skin and into the muscle below.  She sucked in deep, panting breaths and opened her eyes.  Jim’s fit of rage seemed to have passed, but his eyes were dark, dangerous.  He dropped her legs, and seizing a handful of her hair, pulled her face towards his.  Her eyes fixed on his left hand, twitching back and forth with rapid flicks of his wrist, swinging a slender cane  which cut the air with a dull chopping sound, like a helicopter blade.

“Now tell me, Sherlock,” Jim nudged her legs up with his arm and briskly tapped the cane over her thighs and arse in a percussive motion, which wasn’t terribly painful, but she felt the suspense in it, the implied build up.  “Why did you criticize.  Molly’s.  Breasts.”  Each of the last three words was punctuated with a stroke across her arse, lower this time, each sharper than the last.  They cut through the drug and rope induced euphoria, and Molly felt a high squeak escape her throat.  Jim went back to drumming her with the cane, moving down the lengths of her calves and then to the soles of her feet, and oh, that stung. Molly twisted in the rope, ankles flexing, shoulders twisting.  For a moment she managed to lift her neck, and caught a glimpse of Sherlock.

He was leaning forward in the chair now, eyes fixed on—her arse, Molly realized, and she was grateful Jim had left her knickers on.  Sweat was collecting at his brow, and the curl on his forehead that never wanted to stay in place, the one Molly had always dreamed about pushing back with her fingers, was wet with it—or was it still damp from when he’d rinsed the blood out before?  How long had it been since she and Sherlock had performed the autopsy?  Four hours?  Six?  The drugs and pain distorted her sense of time.

“I was jealous.”

The caning stopped, and the combination of the loss of the sensation and Sherlock’s words threw her off balance.  Jim seemed as surprised as she was.

“Well now,” Jim clawed his fingernails over Molly’s rapidly forming welts.  They would bruise, she knew, and incongruously she thought of Sherlock beating poor Mr. Erickson’s corpse with a riding crop, to see what bruises would form.  Molly had been horrified at first, and then intrigued, and then, though she hadn’t admitted it to herself at the time, aroused.  The fierce intensity of his expression, the strength of his shoulders swinging the crop, his wild curls falling into his eyes, had finally induced Molly to stop pining from a distance and ask him out for coffee.  Which of course hadn’t gone well.

She knew it would be terrible if Jim asked her what she was thinking about right now.  But then, her interest had been piqued by seeing Sherlock’s body in motion; she hadn’t been aroused by the thought of him hitting her, and the reality of being beaten hard enough to bruise was—

Jim slid the cane across the arch of her foot, promising more pain.  “That’s more like it, Sherlock.  Continue.”  He rhythmically tapped the sole again.

Sherlock’s words tumbled out faster, “I saw the way she was dressed and the present at the top of the bag, and I deduced she had a new boyfriend.”  

The tapping stopped again.  “And why would you have cared if Molly was seeing someone?  I thought you were besotted with Irene Adler at the time.”

Irene Adler.  Molly knew instantly that she must be the woman whose phone Sherlock had X-rayed in the lab, the woman he’d recognized by her perfect, creamy tits and her Brazilian bikini wax—god that was rude, and unkind, that woman had done nothing to Molly except show up at Bart's on a slab.  It was terrible to think that way about someone who’d been violently murdered; her face had been so badly beaten Molly couldn’t tell if she’d been beautiful, but if Sherlock had been ‘besotted with her,’ she must have been.

“I don’t know.”  Sherlock’s voice was hoarse.

“Not.  Good.  Enough.”  Jim punctuated each word by striking her arse again, each blow landing in the same place as the one before, and on the last one Molly felt her flesh open.  The sound of her scream echoed back to her from the walls of the factory.  Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and she felt Jim’s lips on them, kissing them.  His stubble was rough against her face.

“I’m sorry to put you through this, Molly, but Sherlock is doing this to spare you.  He thinks what he has to say is going to hurt you more than what I’m doing now.  I guess we need to up the stakes a little.”

“No,” Molly pleaded.  “Please, Jim, don’t.”

He pulled his mouth away from her temple and tapped the cane against her arse again. “Did you hear that, Sherlock?”

“I didn’t want her to have moved on,” Sherlock continued, his voice thick.  “You were right, I wanted Irene, but I still wanted Molly to want me.

“Because?” Jim gripped Molly’s ponytail again and wrenched her head up, pointing her face at Sherlock.  He twisted his fingers in her hair until she cried out.

“Because Molly was useful to me.”  Sherlock’s eyes met Jim’s, avoiding hers.  “Her position at Bart's, her particular skill set, were valuable, and her feelings for me made her easy to manipulate.  I didn’t want to lose the hold I had on her, so I was jealous, and I knew my cruelty was one of the traits she found attractive, so I was cruel.”

The words should have cut her like the strokes of the cane, but they didn’t.  They were false, hollow.  Molly’s heart thudded in her chest, because she was sure that Jim would hear the lie in them and punish her, but he didn’t.   Sherlock _had_ been cruel at Christmas; he’d been horrible, but he’d also known that he’d pushed it too far.  He’d apologized, and Molly had never heard Sherlock apologize, not to anyone.  He’d kissed her cheek, a brotherly kiss, but it has still been wonderful for a second, before the moment had been shattered by what she now knew now had been Irene Adler’s moan.  Sherlock had been kind enough to tell them all it wasn’t her, to spare her the humiliation of the others thinking he’d done that to her, in front of everyone.  That small kindness had made a much bigger impact on her than his cruelty, and she was sure Sherlock knew it, and he hadn’t said a word about it to Moriarty.

“What do you think of Sherlock now, Molly?” Jim smirked.

“It’s not true.  He told everyone it wasn’t me who moaned.”  The drugs made her say the first thing in her mind, but she could fight by keeping the thing she didn’t want to say out of her thoughts.  But this time she didn’t fight; she wanted Sherlock to know she’d understood.

“Now _that_ , my dear,” Jim kissed the inside of her ear, running his tongue over the conch, “requires an explanation.”  

Molly recoiled.

Jim’s Irish accent became exaggerated, affected.  “You were holding out on me, Sherlock.  What a very.  Bad.  Boy.  You’ve.  Been.”  The cane found the underwire of her bra, pushing the metal into the tender flesh in the crease underneath her breasts, and Molly yelped and squirmed, only to pull her own hair, still twisted in Jim’s fingers.

Sherlock sat with his arms folded, but Molly could see his face was paler than before.  He had been playing a desperate and dangerous game, telling Jim exactly what he wanted him to say in front of Molly, while hiding the truth, and she’d spoiled it.  But she was playing a game, too, giving Jim something he wanted, something which was not the thing she must not tell Jim at all costs, and this was the best way, the only way.

“I gave Molly a kiss—on the cheek, mind—by way of apology.  Irene had previously pilfered my phone, and customized her text alert noise to the sound of—” he searched for words, “—a woman expressing sexual arousal.  She sent a text at the exact moment I happened to kiss Molly.  Everyone heard it, and Molly was concerned they would think it had come from her.  I corrected them on that point.”

“And Molly thinks if you were really cruel, you wouldn’t have.”  Jim released her and returned to the table, but Molly couldn’t see him from this angle, her head was too heavy to hold up again.

“Tell me, Molly, are you embarrassed by the thought of other people watching you ‘express sexual arousal’?  Would that humiliate you?”

She heard a loud buzzing sound and instantly her cheeks flushed.  There hadn’t been anyone since that awful night with ‘Jim from IT,’ and she’d spent a fair amount of time with her vibrator.

Jim’s was the plug-in kind, shaped like an ice cream cone, and he thrust it directly over her clit, rubbing her through her knickers.  Molly twisted in the rope, her thighs opening and closing, wrists straining—the rope around her forearms had been left relatively slack, and she could probably work her hands free, though it would burn her skin—but Jim dug his fingers into the ropes anchoring her hips and held her tight, and any attempt to squirm away only made her grind into the toy.  The vibrations thrummed through her clit, her labia, down into her belly, and soon her legs were twitching, thighs shaking.  Her breaths became shallow, interspersed with pants and moans.  Her face burned hotter than her arse as she thought about Sherlock watching everything—her soaked knickers, her taught calves and hamstrings.

“Come for me, Molly,” Jim demanded, fingernails digging into her hip, and she did, toes curling, pelvis arching.  A strangled cry escaped her throat as the release thudded through her, so much more powerfully than when she did it herself, whether from the drugs or the rope or the shame of it all, she couldn’t say.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

 _Oh god_ , Molly thought as she let her head fall back, squeezing her eyes shut.  She didn’t want to look at Sherlock, to see what he thought of her coming for Jim, writhing in her binds.

It didn’t stop.  She had expected that Jim would switch the vibrator off, maybe cane her again, or do something even more painful, but instead he continued to press it into her clit.  Molly had managed multiple orgasms with a vibrator before, mostly to see if she could, but usually after one she was sated, over sensitive, even.  But the vibrations continued, deep, insistent.  She felt her heartbeat throbbing in her clit, and she knew she would come again.  Jim let go of her hip and moved his hand behind her neck, gripping her ponytail, and then his mouth was on hers and, to her horror, she was moaning into it.  He sucked her lower lip into his mouth and bit it hard as the second climax shook her, and she became aware that she was grinding her mons into the vibrator; the ropes were swaying with her movements, and she knew Sherlock must think she was a slag, but she couldn’t help it.

By the third one, she wasn’t grinding anymore, she was pleading, begging Jim to stop, and his only response was to snicker.  Molly wondered if he intended to make her come until she blacked out.  By the fourth, she wasn’t thinking anything at all.


	4. Moment of Privacy

Sherlock retreated into his mind palace, leaving the sound of Molly’s cries outside.  Distantly, he knew he ought to feel badly about that.  He was abandoning her, leaving her alone with a madman who seemed determined to render her unconscious through the over application of sexual stimuli.  But he needed to _think_ , and that was impossible to do while watching Moriarty wring orgasm after orgasm from Molly’s convulsing body.

Instead, he ran his memory backwards, retracing their steps, looking for clues, weaknesses.  His best shot at getting his hands on a gun had been to try to take the Beretta off Moriarty, but the outline in his suit jacket was gone, now.  Jim was trusting his body guards, the two goons standing at parade rest behind Molly.  No, the obviously ex-military one was standing at parade rest, and the other was simply imitating the body language of his companion.  No surprise, then, which was the leader of the two.

And then there was the man Moriarty had introduced as Sebastian Moran, perched in the observation deck.  Sherlock was certain he was the sniper who’d trained his weapon first on John, and then on him, at the swimming pool.  The AWC rifle he was currently peering through lacked a laser sight, but Sherlock felt himself in the crosshairs all the same.  He assumed Moran would shoot to incapacitate rather than kill; Jim would be terribly put out if he curtailed their game, but it was going to be difficult enough to extricate himself and Molly _without_ a gunshot wound to the knee.  He wound his mind further back, overlaying the route he remembered from the boot of the car with maps outside the London metro area.  He was reasonably certain of their approximate location, but of course any plan for getting back to the city required escaping the building first.

He pushed those thoughts aside and went further back, to the rooftop.  He had seen Moriarty’s brains leaking out of his skull; he was certain of it.  He felt the same, vertigo inducing doubt, he’d felt at the Cross Key’s Club when he’d tried to explain to John that he’d seen the Hound, knowing what he’d seen was impossible, and knowing without a doubt that he had seen it, and, oh— _stupid, stupid_ —that must be the answer, Moriarty had dosed him with a hallucinogen of some kind, before they’d met on the rooftop.  To control what Sherlock would see, he must have—he cycled through the possibilities, brain overclocking—for a moment he had it, and then, for the second time that day, the walls of his mind palace evaporated with the sound of Jim’s snapping fingers.

“Pity you weren’t paying attention in class, Sherlock, there’s going to be a quiz, later.”

The building came back into focus.  The shadows had shifted.  Judging by the angle of the light through the windows, it had been about two hours since they’d first pulled the pillowcase off his head.  It was now early afternoon, and the slanting sunlight reflected off the thin sheen of perspiration over Moriarty’s pale skin.  His eyes were dark, pupils dilated, his breathing shallow.  Sherlock’s eyes drifted over the front of Jim’s trousers; the outline of his erection was clearly visible through the dark wool.

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry, as he forced himself to look at Molly.  The cane marks were already bruising, and the skin of her thighs was red, her shoulders and face were flushed pink, and strands of her hair were plastered to her cheek with sweat—no, tears.  Her eyes were swollen, and red-rimmed, and closed.

“I did tell you there would be—incentives, for you to be candid, Sherlock.  It’s hardly my fault you were a bit slow on the uptake.”

Sherlock turned his blankest face towards Moriarty, erasing any lines of concern from his features.  It occurred to him that if he snapped off a front kick quickly enough, he might be able to smash Moriarty’s nose into his brain before Moran got off a shot.  Doubtless they’d kill him after, but it would be worth it.  Except—he looked over at Molly, breasts rising and falling shallowly in her ropes—and he shifted his weight onto his elbow and stared at Moriarty coolly instead.

Jim ignored him, turning his back on Sherlock and returning to Molly.  “Now that Molly is properly warmed up,” Jim brushed two fingers against the front of her damp knickers and slid them into his mouth obscenely.  “I think it’s time someone fucked her.  Don’t you?”

Sherlock assembled his features into an indifferent mask.  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Jim shrugged.  “I suppose not, but it might help for you to be in the right mindset, since you’re the one who’s going to be doing the fucking.”

He felt his pulse quicken.

“Before you do something stupid, like say ‘no,’ Sherlock,” Jim crossed to the table with his implements, unwrapped a leather roll filled with an assortment of blades stored in individual pockets, “consider the consequences _very_ carefully.”

Sherlock stood slowly from his chair and buttoned his jacket.  The casualness of the gesture was spoiled by a tremor in his fingers, which he was sure hadn’t escaped Jim’s notice.  He adjusted his lapels and crossed to Jim and Molly slowly, the room completely silent except for the scuffing sound of his shoes on the concrete.  He refused to look at Jim as he walked past him to Molly’s side.  “A moment—”

“Of privacy, I know the drill.  God, you’re so _English_.”  Jim circled his index finger in a clockwise motion, and the two henchmen did an about face.  “Just a moment, though.  I will expect a show.”  Jim turned his back and stepped away from Sherlock, stopping next to the table, hands clasped behind him, rocking back and forth lightly onto his heels.

Sherlock glanced up at the observation deck, where Moran was watching everything impassively, and then turned his focus back to Molly.

“Are you alright?” he asked, brushing her cheek with his fingers.  It was a moronic question, but John had taught him that people occasionally found those soothing.  He slid his hand under her head, as Jim had done—the idea repelled him—supporting her neck.

“It’s going to be okay.”  Molly’s eyes remained closed.

She was trying to comfort _him_.  The idea was absurd.  He wrapped his fingers around hers—they were cool to the touch, but not purple or cold.  She squeezed him.

“Did you hear what he said?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see what he showed me?”

“Yes.”

He took in a shuddering breath.  “I won’t do this if you don’t—” _idiot, of course she didn’t_ want _to,_  “—if you would rather be killed or tortured by an enemy, than,” he forced himself to say it, “raped by a friend, just say it, and I’ll refuse.”

Her eyes opened, glossy and wide.  “They would kill you, too.”

Sherlock thought of John’s voice breaking on the other end of the phone as he begged him not to jump, and promptly squashed that thought, pushing his grief into the depths of his viscera.  “Doesn’t matter.  Everyone who cared about me already thinks I’m dead.”

He knew it was ‘not good’ as soon as he’d said it.  She turned her head away from him, and he bit the insides of his cheeks, cursing himself for his senselessness.  “Forgive me,” he whispered.  “I know you care—more than I deserve—and that’s why I’m telling you that whatever you choose, it’s okay.”

Her eyes locked on his.  They were dilated from the drugs, or the pain, he wasn’t sure, but the will in them was adamant, and he froze.  “I said you could have anything you needed, anything at all.  I said you could have _me_.”

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the intensity of her gaze.  She clutched his finger again.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and kissed her gently on the mouth.  Her lips were chapped and warm, and, to his surprise, parted under his.  He pulled back as though stung.

“Now, now, don’t get started without me.”  Jim made a tsk-tsk noise and pulled Sherlock’s finger from Molly’s hands.  Sherlock turned towards him.  Jim’s face was a mask of mock indignation.

“I was saving this bit.  Hands lose circulation so quickly.”  Jim stepped between Molly’s legs and took hold of the rope binding her forearms.  He worked the knot loose, released her arms, and, blatantly showing off now, repositioned them behind her back, wrists crossed, and bound them without looking, still standing between her thighs.

Jim picked up the blunt tipped scissors he’d used earlier to cut off Molly’s clothes and snipped the elastic holding her ponytail.  He selected a thin, short length of rope and pulled her hair forward, twisting it with the hemp into a top knot.  He looped the rope around the bight of the sling, which was a few inches above her eye level, tensioning it cruelly, until her neck and head were pulled into an upright position.

“That should help her get a better view, don’t you think?” Jim asked.

Molly’s eyes squeezed shut, and her fingers twitched in her binds behind her back.  A vision of himself garroting Moriarty with one of his own ropes, until his eyes bulged and his face was purple, flooded Sherlock’s skull.  Jim’s eyes searched his face, knowingly, and he smiled.

The tips of Moriarty’s fingers danced across the breadth of Sherlock’s chest as he walked past him and towards the armchair.  Jim nonchalantly took a seat, shifting against the rich leather, one ankle resting against his knee, forearms draped over the scrolled armrests, palms down.

“It’s a pity we don’t have any popcorn,”  Jim sighed.  “Oh, well.”  He reached into his pocket and unwrapped a piece of gum, eyes twinkling as he slipped it between his lips.  He raised his eyebrows, chewing slowly, open mouthed, showing his teeth.

Sherlock fought for control of his face.

“Off you go then, we haven’t got all day.  Well, actually we have _the rest of your life_ , but I have other things planned.”

Sherlock winced at the thought of what else Jim might have planned, and then cursed himself for letting that show on his face.  His traitorous fingers were shaking as he loosed the button on his suit jacket and shrugged it off, folding it and placing it on the table, quite deliberately on top of the roll of knives Jim had threatened them with.  Sherlock had little modesty.  He would have strolled naked through Buckingham Palace if John hadn’t intervened; he had changed in front of Jim and Sebastian and used the lav with no sense of shame, but undressing was making the thought of what he was about to do to Molly real, and he fumbled with the first button on his shirt.

“Leave the rest,” Jim said.  “I like you in white; you’re the hero of this fairy tale.”

Sherlock dropped his arms to his sides.

“Molly, on the other hand, I want naked.  Those horrid knickers are giving me hives.”

Moriarty had been waiting for this, had left Molly’s underclothes on so he could force Sherlock to take them off, and his cheeks burned with rage at his own helplessness.  The feeling intensified when he observed the outline of the scissors in Moriarty’s jacket pocket.

He took a few, tentative steps towards the armchair and stretched out his hand. “I’ll be needing the scissors,” he choked on the word, “please.”

Jim rolled his gum with his tongue salaciously, grinned, and pulled them out of his pocket, holding them just out of reach.  “Close, Sherlock, but no cigar.  Try again.”

Sherlock sucked his breath through his teeth, heat tightening his throat, as it had when he was a schoolboy, every time he was asked to show undeserved respect.  The feeling was magnified a thousandfold by his fury at what Jim had made him do to John and Lestrade, what he was making him do to Molly, and at his own impotence to stop it.  “Please, _Sir_.”

“Oooh,” Jim closed his eyes and rocked his head from side to side, as though listening to a favorite piece of music.  “Yes, you may.”  He handed over the scissors, handles first, his expression positively deranged, and Sherlock knew Jim was _daring_ him to stab him in the eye, and he met his stare, head on, refusing to be cowed.  For a long moment they stood, eyes locked, Sherlock’s pulse pounding in his ears, and then he thought of Molly, of how reckless and selfish it was of him to bait Jim, and he turned around, his fingers closing hard enough around the blades to leave an imprint.  These small humiliations were nothing to what Molly had agreed to endure for him, and it would be unforgivable to do anything that might induce Jim to hurt her.

Sherlock stepped between Molly’s legs, the sexual implication made the manuever arguably more threatening than approaching her from the side, but it blocked much of her body from Jim’s view, and also allowed her to look at him without having to turn her head, which Jim had had made nearly impossible with the sadistic thing he’d done with her hair.

He raised his hand to Molly’s throat, caressing her jawline with his thumb.  Her eyes flicked away from him, and he pulled back.  For a moment, he thought of asking her to forgive him.  She’d obviously been affected by the gesture he’d made at the Christmas party, perhaps alluding to that moment of tenderness would reassure her.  But he had no right to ask forgiveness for this, not now, not ever.  Instead, he slid his forefinger under the band of her bra and snipped it with the scissors.  Her sternum rose sharply, and he was grateful that Jim had given them to him, instead of making him use a knife, or tear her clothes off.  He snipped the straps as well, and then moved his hands behind her back, trying to pull the fabric out from under the ropes while touching her as little as possible.

It was a mistake; the cotton stuck to the hemp, and tugging it made her rock back and forth in her binds, and he saw her wince as the rope pulled her hair.  He tried again, moving closer until his thighs were flush with her pelvis, one hand anchored firmly at the small of her back.  He set the scissors on top of her ribcage and pulled the fabric firmly until he could maneuver it out from under the wraps of rope beneath her armpits.  He caught a glimpse of small, pointed nipples, scarcely darker than her skin, in his peripheral vision.  He forced himself to look her in the eyes, and then he considered that that might actually be worse, and settled on the spot between her clavicles.  Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.

He turned his attention to Molly’s knickers.  They had a childish pattern, and were damp with the lubrication Jim had forced out of her.  He left his position between her legs, deciding to approach from the sides.  Carefully working around the rope harness, he snipped once across each hip.  He then held the opposite hip firmly with his hand and braced her thigh against his abdomen while he worked the fabric out from underneath the ropes, pointedly avoiding her crotch.  Once he’d worked both sides loose, he pulled the elastic up from the top, instantly regretting his choice of angle; he was painfully aware of Jim’s eyes between her legs.  Molly was, as well, she was staring at Jim and chewing her lip.  He stopped to place the scissors back on the table and toss the remnants of her underclothes in the bin where Jim had thrown her other things, mostly to stall for time.  Jim was leaning on one of his elbows, his gaze languid.

“You’re boring me, Sherlock.”

The threat set his teeth on edge, and he returned to Molly, stood between her legs again, shielding her from Jim’s eyes, and kissed her.  It was awkward; he had to wiggle a bit to work himself under the long lines of rope which formed triangles between Molly’s hips, the suspension ring, and her thighs.  The sling, which formed a teardrop shape—it’s base was under her shoulder blades, the sides ran across her underarms, it’s apex was the point above her chest where the wraps joined the main suspension line—was more awkward, still.  In the end, he gripped the bight with his left hand and, using it for leverage, torqued his torso to the right, cupping the back of her neck with his right, creating enough slack in the rope binding her hair to turn her face towards his.

She was stiff against him, which was the reaction he had expected the first time; when she’d parted her lips instead it had unsettled him, and yet, somehow, her current stiffness was even more terrible.  He moved his lips to her neck, wanting to whisper something reassuring in her ear, and finding nothing to say.  He pulled back, and tried instead to soothe her with his hands, gliding them firmly and gently over her body.  Her skin was cold; the tiny brown hairs covering her limbs stood on end.  Sherlock leaned forward, pressing as much of their torsos together as was possible—if he moved his neck to the side of the sling and put his head over her shoulder, he could cover most of her body with his.  He wished his stupid transport produced more in the way of warmth.  He slid his left hand through the aperture between her chest and the bight, cradling the back of her head, taking some of the strain off her neck, and moved his right below her shoulder blades, arching her back.  Molly took in a deep, ragged breath, and then released it with a sigh and wrapped her legs around him.


	5. You Can Have Me

It had been terrible, Jim leering at her, chewing gum, while Sherlock cut away her clothes with trauma shears, clinically, as though she were a patient, or worse, a corpse, trying not to look at her, or touch her.  The knowledge that Sherlock was only going to have sex with her because there was a man in the balcony with a rifle trained on him had been more humiliating than climaxing in front of Moriarty, stung harder than the cane.  Sherlock had been kissing her, touching her, and Molly had been miserable, because she’d wanted this, dreamed of this, but in her dreams he’d wanted her, and in reality, it had been painfully clear that he didn’t.  She had been terrified that he might not even be able to do it, that he wouldn’t get aroused, and then Jim might beat her again, or rape her, and her one small bit of consolation in this sickening, terrifying situation, had been knowing that it would be Sherlock, and not Jim.

It had all snapped into place then, a small jolt of clarity had pierced through the fog of drugs which were maybe finally starting to wear off, and Molly realized that Sherlock thought of what he was doing to her as rape, as though he hadn’t grasped that she had agreed to it, and that he was an unwilling extension of Jim.  Molly had told him he could have anything he needed and thought it would be enough.  As if he could look past the fact that she was tied up and drugged and there was a sniper in the balcony with a rifle trained on her, but she has thought if anyone could see past that, could see _her_ , it would be Sherlock, but that had been too much to ask, even of him.

Sherlock’s hands had become less tentative on her body, making long, gentle strokes, and it occurred to her that he was trying to warm her skin.  She’d almost forgotten she was cold; there had been so many other discomforts more salient.  He had pressed the length of his stomach against hers, and she had tried to imagine what she would have done if their places had been exchanged, if Jim had ordered her to hurt Sherlock, and stopped that train of thought abruptly because it was too much to bear.  Then she had wrapped her legs around him, because they were the only part of her body she could use to hold him.

The crisp fabric of his shirt pulled against her belly with the sharp intake of his breath.  Then he’d gone still, back rigid, the tips of his fingers pressing into her neck, where they’d been caressing moments before.  Molly clenched her calves against his ribs and held him, afraid he’d pull away.

When she’d been nine, Molly had climbed a tree in the field outside her grandmother’s house and had been afraid to come down.  She’d wrapped her arms and legs around the trunk, and had clung there, sullenly refusing to let go even when her father had come to her with a ladder, had coaxed and scolded her by turns, until finally, he had pried her arms away and carried her down.

She would have clung to Sherlock this way now, except her arms were tied behind her back, so she couldn’t put them around him, and her hair was pulled forward from the crown like some warped unicorn horn, so she couldn’t lay her head on his shoulder.  Instead, she folded her legs around him and pulled his hips into her thighs, arched her back and pressed his belly to her belly, and held him, hoping that he understood.

For what seemed like an eternity, he stood still, and Molly was afraid he thought her response was simply wanton, like what she’d done with Jim.  And then he pushed the knot above her chest to the side and craned his body around it, his other hand under her head, turning her face towards his.  The rope tugged at her hair, but she didn’t care; his lips were on hers and she opened her mouth under him, and this time, he didn’t pull back.  His tongue slid across hers like a question, and she sucked it in answer.

She could do this, Molly realized.  If she closed her eyes, it wasn’t so bad.  She could try to forget about Jim and the gunmen, and focus on Sherlock, who was touching her, if not with desire, at least with tenderness.  He let go of the ropes at her chest and ran his fingers just below them, over her ribs, and then downwards towards her hips, asking again, and again she answered with her mouth, pulling his full lower lip lightly with her teeth. To her surprise, he shuddered.

Sherlock’s fingers trailed over the top of her left breast, tracing the outline of her areola, avoiding the tender nipples Moriarty had abused and the welts underneath from the cane.  She sighed into his mouth, not wanting the kiss to end, but it was uncomfortable, for him, as well, she was sure, and slowly he released her, and the rope pulled on her hair again.

She opened her eyes, determined to look only at Sherlock.  His pupils were constricted—she saw fear in his eyes, not want.  He licked his lips, looking lost, uncertain what to do next.  Molly squeezed her thighs around him again, intending to be reassuring, and was startled to find him hard when she pulled his pelvis into hers.  She could feel him through his trousers—the soft wool rubbing against her pubic hair—and the passing friction sent a shiver through her.  She felt a flush creeping from her shoulders up to the tops of her ears.  Sherlock’s eyes dropped to the floor, and he moved his hands behind him and unhooked her legs, pulling himself back.

“That’s good, now hold them open and kneel between her legs.  I want to see.”  Jim’s voice cut through her reverie; the warm flush faded instantly and was replaced with a flurry of goose prickles swarming over her arms and legs, a chill settling in her stomach.

Molly’s eyes darted to Jim, who sat leaning forward in the chair, his cock rigid in his trousers, his eyes dark with lust.  She’d been such a fool, to think that Jim would let them have this, would let them close their eyes and forget anyone was watching.  Sherlock took a shuddering breath, and looked down at Molly.  His brows were furrowed, his lips twisted.  Then he knelt, obediently, ducking his curly head out of her view, and pushed her thighs open with his palms, spreading her for Jim.

Jim’s hand went to his cock and Molly thought for a moment he would stroke himself, like a pervert on the tube, but instead, he adjusted his erection and stood up out of the chair, buttoning his jacket.  He walked over to them, his heels clicking on the floor, and she felt Sherlock’s fingers tighten against her thighs.  He was afraid, and that made her afraid, and _that_ made her realize the Pentothal had worn off; she’d lost that fuzzy, ill-defined sense of well-being.  But Jim might not know that, and she was determined not to give information like that away.

Jim walked behind Sherlock and seized a handful of his curls, hauling him upward and pressing his face into Molly’s mons.  She swallowed, throat hot and thick with shame, suddenly, miserably aware of what Sherlock must have felt when Jim first ordered him to have sex with her.  It was wretched to see him his way, Moriarty’s hand locked in a fist at the back of his neck.

“I did tell you there was going to be a quiz later.”  Moriarty gave Sherlock’s hair a final, vicious twist, and then released, shoving him hard enough that Molly swayed in the ropes like she was in a swing.  “Make her come.”

Sherlock steadied her with his hands, and she felt his warm breath on her skin, his tentative kisses over her hair.  Moriarty stood behind him, watching over his shoulder, a lewd grin on his face.

She felt nauseated.  The room began to lurch, and her skin was cold again; trickles of sweat ran down her back, dampening the ropes binding her wrists together.  She rolled her hips slowly and let out a low moan, determined to fake it, to get Jim’s game over with, to get Sherlock off his knees as quickly as possible.  His tongue moved slowly across her labia in broad, long licks, and then up the center, settling on her clit.  He sucked it into his mouth, tongue pressing up against it rhythmically, and he moved his arms over her hips and gripped the knots Jim had tied for leverage, pulling her into him.

His eyes were locked on her face, and she forced herself to look at him because she realized he needed it, needed _her_ ; looking at her was his way of bearing it, of shutting out Jim.  Involuntarily, she felt herself respond, become wet again.  At first, it was terrible; she felt betrayed by her body, like when Jim had made her come with the vibrator, and then she reminded herself that this was Sherlock, trying to please her, even if only to appease Jim, and she jutted her hips forward, pushing back against his mouth.  She wasn’t sure she could really come like this, but her responses weren’t all faked, now.  Her toes curled and her calves tightened, and Sherlock, sensing what she wanted, moved his hands under her arse, cupping her fiercely, letting her writhe under his mouth.  She gripped the sides of his his head with her thighs, hoping he understood she meant to be reassuring, hoping she _did_ mean to be reassuring, because any other motive was perverse.

Out of the corner of her eye, Molly saw that Jim had moved from his place behind Sherlock and returned to his table, and she felt pressure against her chest, an acrid taste in her mouth.  He walked behind her, and Sherlock stopped moving, quiet and still between her legs, and then Jim’s hand was on her breast.  She closed her eyes, only to have them fly open a moment later when she felt the cold metal against her skin.  Jim was fastening an oblong shaped clamp over her nipple, jaws facing downward.  She felt a sharp sting as he closed the clamp on her, which faded to a dull throb with each heartbeat.  He did the same on the other side.  A chain connected them, icy against her breasts.  Jim lifted it from behind her and pulled, and the clamps tightened, and the ache became a burn.

“Open your mouth,” Jim demanded, and Molly complied.  He pressed the length of chain between her teeth.  “Hold it.”

He released the chain and strode towards Sherlock.  His nostrils flared; the muscles in his neck corded.  “DID I SAY YOU COULD STOP?” he shouted.

Molly cringed as though Jim had struck her.  Sherlock moved his lips against her again, but any pleasure she had felt was gone.  Jim grabbed him by the hair again, pulling him away from her.  He slapped him across the face, hard enough to make the skin jump.

“Answer me when I ask you a question!  I said, ‘did I say you could stop?’”

“No.”

Moriarty hit him again, with the back of his hand, this time.  “No, what?”

“No, Sir.”

Molly felt tears welling in her eyes, and it wasn’t because of the pain in her nipples.  She bit the chain to hold them back.

“Next time you forget, I’ll hit Molly, and it won’t be with my hand.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir."  Sherlock’s voice was low, toneless.

Jim struck him again anyway.  “That last one was because you are fucking useless at this.  Try something else.  Whatever you want—I don’t care—but get her off before I get bored again.”

Sherlock stood unsteadily, and Molly saw splotches of red on his cheeks.  There was a tightness in the skin around his eyes.  He was off his knees, though, and for that, she was grateful.  Sherlock placed a hand on Molly’s midriff, stroking the curve of her belly with his thumb.  With his other hand, he gripped the knot of rope at her hip.  Molly was starting to feel her weight in the binds; the ropes under her ribs weren’t so bad, though she felt pressure along her armpits, but the ones on her thighs were beginning to cut.  She hadn’t noticed until Sherlock had put his hands under her buttocks, and then the temporary relief as he’d lifted her upward and had made it that much worse when he’d let go.

Sherlock moved his left hand to her hip, tracing down the illiac crest towards her mons again, the ball of his thumb circling gently over her clit.  His eyes were fixed on her navel.  He placed the first two fingers of his right hand in his mouth, and then stroked her with them.  The ropes left Molly with most of the range of motion in her legs, and she parted her thighs.  The movement made her sway, and Sherlock caught hold of the rope at her right hip with his left hand to steady her.  He closed his eyes, biting his lower lip, and slid the fingers of his right inside her.


	6. The Virgin

Sherlock cringed when he felt Molly’s wetness.  Jim had forced her body to betray her, and now he was doing the same.  His cheeks were hot, and not just because Moriarty had slapped him earlier.  His body had also betrayed him.  Molly had felt his arousal earlier when she’d wrapped her legs around him—he’d seen it on her face.  What must she think of him?  She’d been bound naked before three men with guns and a psychopath who had beaten and tortured her, and Sherlock had gotten an erection.

Molly was never going to smile awkwardly at him, or part her hair on the side for him, again.  There would be no more lunches of crisps eaten over microscopes at Bart’s, no more carefully wrapped Christmas presents marked _Dearest Sherlock_.  Molly had offered him anything, and Sherlock had responded by taking everything.

He curled his fingers inside her, searching for the spongy tissue of her Gräfenberg spot, his thumb rocking back and forth against her clitoris.  She swayed in her binds, arching against him, and he felt his lips twist.  He reminded himself that Molly had chosen this over being killed by Moriarty, for all that was worth.  With his left hand, he grasped the ropes, pinning Molly’s thigh against his, and with his right thumb, he stroked her hood, dragging his fingers across the engorging spot inside her with firm, beckoning motions.  Molly moaned with each stroke, rolling her hips under his hands.  He wondered whether she was feigning arousal, found himself hoping she was, that she might retain some dignity.

He felt Moriarty’s fingers skim across his shoulders, his breath against his neck.  “Fuck her, Sherlock,” Jim whispered in his ear.

Sherlock’s throat swelled shut, heat filling his esophagus.  He had known this was coming, and the foreknowledge had done nothing to ease it.  Jim wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s waist, unfastening his trousers.  He felt Jim’s erection against the back of his thigh, and his intestines roiled.  He struggled to keep his fingers working inside Molly, remembering what happened the last time he stopped doing something Jim had asked of him, while Jim jerked down his zip and pulled his shirt out from his trousers.  Jim raked his fingernails down Sherlock’s sides, hard enough to break the skin, and Sherlock winced, biting his lip to keep from grunting.  The nails continued over his hips, digging under his waistband.  Jim’s hands pulled Sherlock’s pants over the head of his penis, and then his hands were around it, pulling him free.  Sherlock felt, incongruously, relieved.  He hadn’t known how he was going to manage the actual act of bringing himself out in front of Molly, and Jim had helpfully solved that particular problem for him.  He watched Jim’s hands, smaller than his own, sliding the foreskin over the tip, twisting it in his fingers, then sliding it back, exposing the glans, shiny with pre ejaculate.  His touch was dry, and none too gentle.

Sherlock ignored his own discomfort and focused on Molly, fingers still crooked inside her.  She was staring at him, eyes wide with alarm, the chain connecting the nipple clamps still clenched between her teeth.  He couldn’t tell if she was afraid _of_ him or afraid _for_ him, and he couldn’t decide which was worse.

Jim pulled him backward, pressing Sherlock’s buttocks against his groin, and he lost his balance.  Without thinking, he withdrew his hand from Molly and grasped the ropes at her hip to steady himself, cringing when he realized that Jim might use it as an excuse to punish them.  But Jim said nothing; he let go of Sherlock and moved to Molly’s side, reached across her abdomen and slid his own hand between her legs.  Sherlock wanted desperately to break his wrist, to crush his fingers, and that was unforgivably hypocritical given his own hand had been there moments before, and was that any different?  Jim placed his index finger on one of Molly’s labia and his middle finger on the other, and fanned them, spreading her obscenely.  Sherlock stared at Jim’s face; his eyes were mad, dark with entropy, his grin demented.  It was the face he’d seen floating before him when he’d been exposed to the hallucinogenic toxin at Baskerville, a face that had said, _well, good luck with that_ , before opening its mouth and inserting the barrel of a Beretta between it’s lips—a face which said its owner was completely unhinged and capable of anything.

Sherlock steadied his cock with his hand and guided himself into Molly, who looked at him from beneath furrowed brows, chain clenched between her teeth.  It would have been better if he’d really fallen, if his body was broken on a slab at Bart’s instead of inside the woman who had risked everything to make sure that body wasn’t his.   _Oh, just kill yourself,_ Jim had told him _.  It’s a lot less effort._  He would have wept if he could breathe.

“My original order still stands, Sherlock.  Make her come, or I will get bored, and when I get bored, I get… violent.”  Jim covered his hand with his mouth, pretending to bite his nails, his face a caricature of consternation.

More than anything, Sherlock wanted to retreat to his mind palace, to shut Jim out, to shut his own body out, to flee from his wretched carcass.  It was craven, and Molly deserved better.  He forced himself to look her in the eyes.  They were blown dark, but the glassiness was gone, and her gaze was steady.  To his amazement and horror, she folded her legs around him again, locking her ankles behind his hips, rocking herself onto him.

His heart continued to slam blood against his eardrums, but the tightness in his throat relented.  Molly’s courage was giving him strength.  He placed his right hand over her clitoris again, the heel this time, kneading her as though she were bread.  With his left he gripped her hip, holding her fast, trying to keep her from swaying too much while he thrust.  He was aware of Jim’s eyes on him and ignored them, focusing his attention on Molly.

She clutched him with her legs, and he shuddered when he felt her clutching him with her kegel muscles as well, relaxing as he entered her and gripping him as he withdrew.  This wasn’t a show for Jim, who couldn’t know; this was for Sherlock, her way of telling him—what?  That she ‘consented’?  There was no way he could entertain the thought of applying that word to this situation.  Still, he could feel the tension building in her, the tightening of her calves behind him, the press of her pubic bone grinding into his hand.  It dawned on him that he was actually going to do what Jim had demanded of him, and he didn’t know whether to feel miserable or relieved.

Molly convulsed around him, her body arching against his, thrashing in her binds, and then she screamed when Jim pulled the chain from her teeth, tore the clamps from her nipples.  Sherlock’s legs buckled under him, rage welling behind his eyes as Molly’s muscle spasms clenched him.

Jim walked around her, running his fingers over her breasts, torquing her abused nipples and making her sob.  He stood behind her again, and released the narrow cord securing the top knot, cradling her head and lowering it back, stroking her face and making cooing noises.  Sherlock snarled.  Jim began untying the knot securing the main suspension line to the sling.  Sherlock slowed his movements, shifting more of the weight of Molly’s legs against his thighs, moving both his hands under her hips, preparing to draw her to him if Jim made any move to drop her.

Jim continued, quicker now that Sherlock was supporting Molly, and loosened the tension on the main line.  He dropped Molly’s chest downward a few feet until her head was lower than her hips, and re-secured her in the new position.  Jim pulled Molly’s hair back, arching her throat, and his intentions became suddenly, wrenchingly, _obvious_.  

Sherlock heard his own words before he felt his lips forming them.  “Stop.  Don’t.  Please.”

And Jim did stop, his hands still gripping Molly’s hair, his groin pressed to her lips.

Sherlock pulled out of Molly, his erection had wilted anyway, and sank to his knees.

“Please,” he said again, “Please, Sir, I’m begging you.”  He banished every sliver of pride and crawled underneath Molly until he reached Jim’s feet, and knelt, his head down.  He took a risk, then, and looked up, unsure if Moriarty would find eye contact arousing, or impertinent.

Jim’s eyes were dark with predatory hunger, but there was no anger in them.

Sherlock took his chance, then.  “Please,” he murmured.  “Let me.”

Jim tilted his head and smiled, perversely fond, and released Molly’s hair and let her head drop back, stroked Sherlock’s cheek with his freed hand.  Sherlock forced himself not to recoil, relaxed his muscles in anticipation of another blow, but none came.  Instead, he felt Jim’s fingers twist into his hair, press his face into Jim’s crotch.

He took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, putting his mouth over Jim’s tented trousers, letting him feel the heat of his breath.  Sherlock had a fair amount of experience with fellatio; during his first semester at uni he’d endeavored to figure out why most people were obsessed with sex, and the majority of his assignations had been with men.  He’d so rarely felt attracted to anyone that the gender of his partners didn’t particularly matter; sex for him had mostly been about data collection, and he found gay men generally easier to get into bed and less concerned about what it was supposed to ‘mean’ afterwards.  He had learned he didn’t much enjoy manual stimulation—penetration even less so, which meant that many of his sexual encounters had consisted of him fellating other men unreciprocated.  Still, it had been years since he’d done this, and he felt an inordinate amount of pressure to impress, to distract Jim enough to keep his attention off Molly.

He tentatively ran his fingers up Jim’s thighs, testing whether he would be allowed use of his hands.  Jim made no move to stop him, in fact pulled his head back a bit to give him room to maneuver, so he unfastened Jim’s trousers and pulled down his zip, exposing the neon band of his underwear.

“I thought you might like them, Sherlock.  You did take such special notice of them last time.”

Sherlock ignored the quip, working the band down over Jim’s erection, which sprung free of his pants.  He anchored the base with his left hand and gave Jim a few strokes with his right, running his tongue over the sides to work up a bit of lubrication.  Then he took the head into his mouth.  It tasted much as he remembered, slick and salty and faintly bitter.  He located the frenulum with his tongue, licking firmly and pressing the glans into his soft palate.  He closed his lips around his teeth and worked down the shaft, letting the head press into the back of his throat, staying down as long as he could before pulling up again, his hand following his mouth up the shaft, thumb and index finger forming a tight ring around it.  He popped his lips over the pronounced ridge of the glans, swirled his tongue over the frenulum again, and took another breath through his nose before pressing back down.   _Just another blow job_ , he told himself, he’d given plenty without being too concerned about the identity of the person on the other end—what was one more?

“Look at me.”  Jim thrust his hips into him, and for a moment he struggled, using all his willpower not to gag.  Sherlock slowed, lifting his eyes upward, and took in Jim’s gloating, blissful face—his fluttering eyelids, temples shimmering with perspiration, jaw working slowly as he chewed his gum.  He inhaled, breathing around what he was now unpleasantly reminded was Jim’s cock, before sliding down again, and this time, Jim held him there; his hand pushed down on the back of Sherlock’s head until his eyes watered.  When Jim jerked him back by the hair he gasped, and didn’t get nearly enough time or air before he was pushed down again.  He swallowed to keep from choking, but Jim held him until he did, and he felt his fingers curl against Jim’s trousers.

“That’s quite enough of that,” Jim hissed, seizing Sherlock’s hand, bending the fingers back, sending bright tendrils of pain down his forearm.  He pulled out of Sherlock’s mouth and crossed to his table, returning with a length of rope, and Sherlock obediently folded his arms behind his back.

Jim stood behind Sherlock, fiddling with the rope but making no move towards Sherlock’s hands.  He was uncertain what Jim was doing until he pulled Sherlock’s wrists through two loops of rope which he brought up over his shoulders.  He felt the knot between his scapulae, and it was clearly one that tightened itself, because as Moriarty pulled the working ends of the rope he felt his shoulders pull back.  The process began again, two more loops, over his biceps, this time, and then again, above his elbows, and again, just below, and after each set of loops Moriarty made a slip knot and pulled it tight until his elbows were drawn almost together.  His shirt strained against the buttons as his chest was pushed forward.  Another pair of loops pulled in his forearms, and finally his wrists were bound together with several, neatly stacked rows, and then cinched apart.  He had maybe ten minutes in this position before he lost circulation to his fingers.

Sherlock had practiced escapology and knew it would be nearly impossible to work himself free of his binds.  It was completely illogical that this should concern him; there was nowhere for him to go—not with the sniper in the balcony and Molly tied next to him.  Still, he felt his vulnerability keenly; it would be incredibly difficult for him to regain a standing position.

Moriarty showed no sign of wanting him off his knees anytime soon, which was unfortunate, as his patellae felt as though they would crack.  Jim tilted his head to the side, rolling his shoulders, his eyes focused on Sherlock’s mouth, running his thumb across his lower lip while idly stroking his erection.  He pried Sherlock’s lips apart with his fingers, pushed his tongue down and pressed them into the back of his throat.  Sherlock envisaged himself biting down—the sharp yelp of pain, the hot metallic blood filling his mouth.  Jim grinned, surely knowing what he was thinking, and pulled his fingers out, patted Sherlock’s cheek affectionately, streaking his face with saliva.

Jim thrust himself into Sherlock’s mouth again, fingers twisting in his curls, and he was better prepared this time; he relaxed his throat and let Jim fuck him.  In some ways it was easier—no finesse required.  All he had to do was keep his muscles slack and breathe at every opportunity.  Again Jim anticipated him, releasing Sherlock’s hair and putting his hands on hips.

“You know what I like, now.  Work for it.”

Sherlock took another breath and swallowed, pressing down until his lips reached the base.   Jim’s pubic hair was neatly trimmed, and he smelled of preseminal fluid overlayed with sandalwood scented soap.  Holding both Jim’s gaze and his cock in his throat, Sherlock stayed down until floaters swam across his vision, opening his mouth and letting saliva trickle down his chin as he pulled up.

“Mmm…  Definitely not a virgin, but your control over your gag reflex is only intermittent.  I take it that means you don’t do this for John.”

Sherlock choked.  He couldn’t delete his fear for John, his knowledge that he hadn’t completed his end of the bargain, but he’d been doing a very good job of not thinking about something about which he could do nothing until this moment.

Jim chuckled at him.  “I guess Irene and I are even now; I said you were a virgin—she said you and John were a couple.”

 _Wrong._  But Sherlock had never let anyone’s prurient, ignorant speculation about the nature of his relationship with John get under his skin before, and he wasn’t about to start now.  He pulled all the way up, tilting his head from side to side, knowing Jim would be able to see himself pressing against his cheeks, then opened his mouth, letting Moriarty’s cock slap against his face.  Jim moaned at that, and rocked his hips slowly, and Sherlock matched his rhythm, moving his lips up and down over the shaft, pausing at the base and letting Moriarty thrust into his throat before coming up again.

“I rather like that,” Jim murmured.  “Knowing he’s never had you.  Knowing he’ll never have you.  I’m going to have you every way I can imagine, Sherlock.  And then I’m going to kill you, and no one else will ever have you again.”

He felt his breath go out of him, and that was terrible timing, because Jim shoved himself down his throat and held him, and he had no air, no freedom of movement.  He gagged around Jim, struggled against the ropes, which cut into his arms, sent pinpricks of pain down to his fingers.  Jim continued to hold his hair with his left hand and pinched his nose with his right, thrusting again and again, hard, scraping his tonsils.  His lungs burned.  He ground his knees into the concrete.  The pattern of his own blood vessels was visible through his clenched eyelids.  The urge to bite was overwhelming.  He fervently hoped he would loose consciousness before he succumbed to it.

“Look at me,” Jim said.

He opened his eyes, which refused to focus, and then he felt the tell tale pulses, the tightening of Jim’s scrotum, and hope flooded him.  Jim would let him breathe, after, and if he ejaculated down his throat Sherlock wouldn’t have to taste him.

Jim gripped his hair, pulling him back.  “Open your mouth.”

He gasped for air, nearly aspirating the bitterness Jim filled him with as he did so.  He closed his eyes; hot, viscous threads streaked his face, clung to his eyelashes.  His eyes teared— _involuntary response to irritation_.  Nothing he hadn’t done before—nothing he wouldn’t do again, for Molly.  She’d done more than anyone had the right to ask of another person for him.  He could do this for her.

He got what he’d worked for.  Moriarty snapped his fingers, looked up to the observation deck at the sniper.  “Moran.  Trade places with Evans.  And bring Molly down.  I have a new toy, now.”  Jim pulled himself free and rubbed his cock over Sherlock’s face, his hair, smearing him with semen.  He put his tongue out, taking it, watching Jim’s pupils blow dark, his own widening with triumph.


	7. Prepared to Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter depicts a [strappado suspension](http://phrtoolkits.org/toolkits/istanbul-protocol-model-medical-curriculum/module-4-torture-methods-and-their-medical-consequences/torture-methods/suspension/) or Palestinian hanging. This is a torture position, and is much more brutal (and dangerous) than the rope bondage depicted in previous chapters. 

It had been even better than he’d imagined, Sherlock Holmes crawling on the floor, bespoke wool trousers snagging on the concrete, kneeling at his feet, begging Jim to let him suck his cock.  He’d been only too happy to oblige; Sherlock’s decadent lips were made for stretching around a prick; his curls cried out to be twisted and used to force his head down.  He hadn’t planned on letting himself come so soon, but Sherlock’s peculiar mix of technical know how and lack of practice was compelling.  The certainty that no one else had used that lovely mouth in a decade, not even his pet, had made him ache with want.  Sherlock was _his_ —to fuck, to break, to burn, to kill.  He’d told him so, and then he’d cut off Sherlock’s air supply to make that perfectly clear.

Sherlock’s tongue flailed against him as he gagged; his throat was hot, and wet, and wanton.  Jim pinched his nostrils between his index and middle finger, and Sherlock blinked rapidly—his first flash of genuine panic.  Jim smiled, looking down at him, and watched his eyes clench shut.  Sherlock’s throat was supple, slick, splendid; he was close now.  He wondered if Sherlock would pass out before he could finish—and the thought of him limp, senseless, pushed him over the edge.

“Look at me,” he said.  “Open your mouth.”  

He did, and Jim’s whole body shuddered, and he had to force himself not to thrust into that velvet throat again; he wanted to see Sherlock’s face covered in his come, to fill Sherlock’s mouth with his taste.  Jim released his nose and gripped his pulsing cock with his hand, rubbing it across Sherlock’s cheek and eyelids, cleaning himself with his curls.  He was thoroughly debauched now, delectable, gorgeous.  

Jim took in a ragged breath and tucked his still twitching prick into his pants, fingers trembling as he pulled up the zip on his trousers. Yes, that had been far more satisfying than it would have been to watch Sherlock’s reactions as he throat fucked Molly.  He realized he’d forgotten about her entirely; she was still hanging in suspension, neck back, probably with a vicious head rush, and not in a position to have witnessed Sherlock’s sudden display of altruism.  Pity.  He’d let Sherlock distract him.  He instructed Moran and Evans to change places; the former was a competent rigger and should be able to bring Molly down.

While Moran busied himself with untying Molly, Jim returned to his table, pointedly lifting Sherlock’s jacket off the leather roll he’d showed him earlier, unveiling his blades.  Sherlock shifted on his knees, which had to be murdering him by now, and fixed his eyes on Jim while he made his selection—a delicate, handmade knife, with a slender blade and an ivory handle.  Jim held it in front of Sherlock’s face, let the rapidly fading sunlight from the windows glint off the steel.  With one hand twined in Sherlock’s curls, he tilted his neck, tracing the tip of the blade down the line of tendon to his shirt collar.

Jim released Sherlock’s hair and seized his shirt, holding the fabric taut as he slid the knife down the button band.  The shanks provided no resistance whatsoever.  One by one, the buttons clinked on the concrete, a ‘v’ of pale flesh opening as the shirt pulled apart.  Jim put the hilt of the knife in his teeth and jerked the fabric back over Sherlock’s shoulders, exposing his lean chest and elegant throat.   He graped Sherlock’s curls with his right hand and arched his neck back, pressed the blade against his throat, just hard enough to draw blood.  He took a taste; salt and iron mixed with wintergreen as he swallowed Sherlock’s blood with his gum.  He smelled fear in the sweat dampening Sherlock’s collar, felt it in the movement of his adam’s apple against his lips.  Jim bit it, hard, suppressing the urge to rip out Sherlock’s trachea with his teeth.

He crouched in front of Sherlock and continued down, making small cuts along the lengths of Sherlock’s clavicles.  His supple flesh parted easily on either side of Jim’s knife, and blood welled out of the newly made furrows.  He chased the blade with his tongue, lapping the red beading on white skin, then did the same over Sherlock’s ribs, the ends of which were visible against his chest.  The crease below his pecs warranted special attention; he cut deeply enough to expose the translucent spheroids of underlying fat—mouthwatering, like tapioca pearls.  Sherlock’s chest trembled under his lips with the force of his rapid, shallow breathing.  Jim held him steady, and made a long, vertical cut over his breastbone, through all the layers of skin, down to the white, fibrous, subcutaneous tissue.  He wanted to cut deeper, through the muscle, down to the bone.  It would be easy; the blade was sharp, and the layers of tissue thin, here.  But that would require getting the suture kit out afterwards, and suturing was boring.  He licked up the length of the wound and along Sherlock’s throat and chin, stopping at his clenched lips.  

“Clean it,” Jim whispered, pressing the blade to them.  Sherlock’s pupils constricted, black pinpoints in a gray sea, as he tilted his head, licked his own blood from the knife.  Jim chuckled, his fingers twining in Sherlock’s hair again, and pulled his head back, bending down, crushing his mouth over Sherlock’s, his tongue invading his mouth.  Their kiss tasted of blood.  He took Sherlock’s lower lip between his teeth and bit it until the blood taste was fresh, hot on his tongue.  Jim stood back to observe his handiwork.  Sherlock’s lips were swollen and bruised; red smeared his chin.  He slapped Sherlock’s face, just to watch his hair fall into his eyes.  The man was unforgivably beautiful, and Jim intended to make him suffer for it.

Jim seized the black curls again and bowed Sherlock’s torso, moved the knife lower, continued carving over the natural lines of his bones and muscles beneath his exposed flesh, outlining them in red.  He was exquisite, like a Da Vinci anatomy drawing—rust colored ink on white parchment.  Low moans and hisses escaped Sherlock’s lips, and Jim paused occasionally to bite and kiss them, but Sherlock refused to cry out.

He reached Sherlock’s waistband; his zip was still open and his flaccid cock flopped out of his fly.  He hadn’t bothered to tuck himself back into his pants when he’d pulled out of Molly and dropped to his knees to beg.  Jim shifted himself onto one knee, and then it was easy to bend down, to take Sherlock’s whole prick into his mouth and suck, scraping against the soft flesh with his teeth, the threat always present.  Jim could taste Molly on him—grapefruit and aluminum foil.

Jim paused to look at her.  Molly sat at Moran’s feet, knees drawn to her chest, arms folded tightly around them.  The red indentations from the ropes were visible on her wrists, but the rest of his handiwork was hidden by her folded body.  She peered over her kneecaps, watching silently.  Moran was standing at parade rest with an expression others might have called blank, but which Jim could see contained irritation, and what might have been jealousy.

The thought aroused him, and he stood up, pulled Sherlock’s hair and hauled the other man up with him.  Sherlock staggered off-balance, knees buckling under him.  He jerked Sherlock’s trousers and pants roughly down his thighs, exposing them.

“Why don’t you come join us Molly?” he asked.  “I do know how you hate it when Sherlock forgets about you.”

Sherlock looked at him with the expression he’d worn at Kitty Riley’s flat—face flushed, lips curled back to expose his teeth—Jim didn’t need to see his hands to know they were balled into fists behind his back.  The brilliant Sherlock Holmes hadn’t been able to come up with a cleverer response to Jim’s performance as Richard Brook than to try and _punch_ him, and he had nothing better now.  He was all tells, no control at all over those expressive features, not like Jim, who was the master of his face.  He arranged it into the same, cold smile he’d shown Sherlock between his raised palms while Kitty had been focused on John.

Jim held his smile, never letting it touch his eyes, until Sherlock remembered his place.  He dropped his head to the side, swallowing, and _oh_ , that neck again, exposed in submission, beautiful but not quite within reach—their height difference annoyed him.  It would have to be rectified.

“Crawl to us, Molly.  Sherlock did it so fetchingly.  See if you can do better.”

It took a moment to register; Molly was responding like an audience member called up onstage by an actor who wasn’t sure whether or not the summons was part of the show.  She unfolded her arms slowly, turning her knees to the side and tucking them underneath her. She put her hands down on the ground and shifted her weight onto all fours, and Sherlock’s mouth worked, drawing down at the corners.  Molly’s hair fell over her face in a tangled mess; Moran had cut the rope and all of it was wild now.  She moved gingerly, her eyes on the floor, mindful of cracks and puddles.  Jim rocked back on his heels and watched her wince as her knee came down on a small stone.

When she was at his feet, he motioned towards Sherlock’s trousers.  “Help him out of them—and don’t forget his socks, there’s nothing more forlorn looking than a naked man in socks.”  He moved behind Sherlock and gripped his arms, holding him steady, while Molly untied his shoes, delicately removed them, and pulled his trousers and pants down to his ankles.  Sherlock helped her, lifting his feet and kicking out of them, balancing first on one foot, then the other, while Molly peeled his socks off, before stepping barefoot onto the floor.  And that was impressive, he should be flying high with endorphins by now.  Jim kissed the back of Sherlock’s neck proudly, and put his own feet against his bare insteps, pushing his stance wider, until they were of a height.  He pulled Sherlock’s shirt further back over his shoulders.  The dragonfly sleeve he’d tied around Sherlock’s arms prevented him from completely removing it, but he made a few slits in the cotton with the knife and tore off the bulk of the excess fabric, wrenching Sherlock off balance as he did so.

“Such a shame,” he said, walking around Sherlock, “that you’ve already spoiled this shirt with bloodstains—second one today.  I do so enjoy ruining well-made things.”  He bit Sherlock’s nipple, hard enough to turn it pleasingly purple in a few minutes time.  Sherlock ground his teeth and jerked against him.  Jim traced him with the knife again, following the lines of his obliques, smearing the blood with his thumb, touching it to Sherlock’s lip.  Taking his wrists in hand, Jim marched Sherlock towards the scaffold.  He snapped his fingers and pointed at the ground, and Molly crawled after them, kneeling on the floor near Moran again.

Moran had arranged Jim’s hanks of rope before their arrival with his customary, military precision, sorted them by diameter and length on the table, and he’d tied the ropes Jim had used to bind Molly into neat hanks and returned them to their proper places in the sequence.  Because he was a romantic, Jim picked up the first rope, the one he’d used to start the sling, and threaded the bight between Sherlock’s bound wrists, pulling the working end through the larks head and up through the suspension ring, hitching his arms up into a strappado position.  Sherlock exhaled forcefully when Jim hoisted his wrists even with his chest, and again, when he lifted them over his head, his weight pitching forward.  Jim handed the live end of the rope to Moran, who tied it off to a spot behind them on the scaffold where two supports intersected.  The position perfectly accentuated the curve at the small of Sherlock’s back, pushed out his luscious hips and arse.  Possessively, he ran his fingers along the cleft, resting his thumb over Sherlock’s tailbone.  He ran his tongue up the length of Sherlock’s spine, pausing to bite the flesh under his shoulder blades, feeling the tension already bunching between them.

He returned to his table and picked up a wooden spreader bar, the ends of which had been drilled with holes and pre-threaded with 4 mm rope at each end.  He dropped into a crouch and tied a simple cuff around Sherlock’s pale ankle, then did the same on the other side.  He could see Sherlock’s shoulders torque forwards as his legs were forced apart, the wider stance making him effectively shorter.  He panted, lips parting, and Jim couldn’t resist keeping them that way.  He selected a metal O-ring gag, fit with prongs at the sides to spread the lips, and forced it between Sherlock’s teeth, tightening the strap at the back of his neck until the leather bit into his cheeks.  Sherlock turned his head towards Jim, his eyes burning, and Jim held them, letting him see the expression that invariably made people flinch, even Irene Adler, and Jim had been strapped to a St Andrews cross while both of them watched and smelled her burning his flesh at the time.

Jim had given her a look that showed their ‘game’ was deadly serious to him, that he was willing to carry it to its conclusion; she could’ve done anything she dared and he would have been willing to take it further.  He’d been bored enough to let her kill him, if she’d had the grit or the aptitude, but she’d possessed neither.  Irene had flinched.  She called herself a dominant but quailed when presented with real power, called herself a sadist but lacked the stomach to inflict real pain.  She had naively expected that Jim would confine himself to her small world of ‘risk aware and consensual.’  Jim had called her bluff, let her see who he really was, for one moment, and then had gone back to pretending to be submissive, like he’d pretended to be gay with Molly, to be frightened with Kitty.

The elder Holmes hadn’t technically _flinched_ , it was true, but Jim had called his bluff as well, had shown himself all too willing to take anything Mycroft’s spooks were prepared to give, and then some.  Even more diverting, Mycroft had thought himself subtle, had thought he could extract with words what his thugs had failed to draw out with fists—and drugs, and waterboarding.  Jim had enjoyed that game, letting Mycroft imagine they were building rapport while he teased out little bits of Sherlock’s history: how he hadn’t spoken until he was nearly three and then had come out with grammatically correct sentences, how once Mycroft had found him, nose bloodied, cowering in a cupboard at school, how Mycroft had confronted Sherlock the first time he had shown up high at a family gathering, defying his brother to say something, and what he’d said.  Jim had squirreled those little nuggets carefully away, and in return, he’d told Mycroft the truth; he’d played _fair_ , which is what amused him most of all.   _There is no key code_ , he’d said, and Mycroft had merely scowled and ordered his minions to beat him some more.  So like his brother, needing everything to be clever.

Jim brought his focus back to the younger Holmes.  Sherlock did not flinch; he stared back, with the same black, bottomless look Jim saw in the mirror.   _I am you_ , those eyes said. _Prepared to do anything.  Prepared to burn.  Prepared to do what ordinary people won’t do._  Jim kissed him, elation flushing his face.

The giddiness passed, and Jim signaled to Moran, who untied the line from the scaffold and pulled the rope, drawing Sherlock up, first onto the balls of his feet and then onto his toes, long and delicate and straining, and Sherlock whimpered, small grunts and groans escaping his gagged mouth, his thoracic back arching forward now.  He danced on tip toe, struggling for balance.

“Hold the bar,” he ordered Molly.  “Keep him steady.”

Jim had an extensive whip collection, and had brought several of his favorites, but now, with Sherlock stretched out in all his ethereal vulnerability, he realized only one would do.  Coiled on the table was a sixteen plait kangaroo hide bullwhip, built for function, not ornament, supple and perfectly balanced, in its natural rust color.  Jim removed his jacket and unfastened his cuffs, rolled back his shirtsleeves.  He took the whip into his hand, its weight intimately familiar.   _This_ was his instrument, and he was as proficient with it as Sherlock was with his violin.

The whip was only four feet long; the scaffolding had limited clearance, and Jim was comfortable with his height and his cock size and had absolutely nothing to compensate for.  A shorter whip was faster, meaner, required more perfect form.  He ruffled Molly’s hair as he walked by her, uncoiling the whip as he went, feeling her eyes on his back.  Jim swung the whip fluidly, helicopter style, twice around his head, feeling it build momentum as it whistled in the air, following through with his whole body as he snapped it; the cracker simultaneously broke the sound barrier and the skin of Sherlock’s back.  Molly’s cry was louder than Sherlock’s, but the impact shook him, left a bright welt diagonally across his right shoulder.  Jim passed the whip to his other hand and repeated the stroke on the opposite side.  He set a rhythm for himself, alternating hands with each stroke to keep from tiring, leaving a red chevron design over Sherlock’s back, periodically breaking the pattern with a wicked overhand lion tamer’s crack that cut into his buttocks or shoulders.

He continued, building momentum and his own arousal, his eyes on Sherlock’s straining calves and toes until he could bear it no more.  He stopped, draped the whip over Sherlock’s neck, turned another pirouette, ending with his hands on either side of Sherlock’s face, and crushed his lips against his open mouth.  He knelt before him and pulled Molly’s hands away from the bar, drug her back a few feet and deposited her next to Sebastian.  Jim signaled him, and he unfastened the line from the scaffold and pulled again with relish.  Sherlock’s toes left the ground completely.  His knees turned inward, struggling against the spreader bar, and the force of his movements made him spin.  He twisted slowly in his binds, the full weight of his body on his wrists.  His hands were already turning violet; his arms pulled into an obtuse angle behind him.  Sherlock’s trapezius muscles clenched; while he could flex them, it would keep the pressure on his wrists, but more than a few minutes in this position and he would exhaust himself, would start to hang in his binds and shift the pressure to his shoulders, which would eventually dislocate.  His breaths were sharp and shallow, each eliciting a cry.

Jim waited a moment, pressed his right elbow behind his back with his left palm and held the stretch, then repeated the gesture on the other side.  He rolled his shoulders, popped his neck, ignoring Sherlock, letting the ropes do their work for him.  Once he began to struggle, Jim stood in front of him, clawed his broken skin with his fingernails, and slid his bloodied fingers into Sherlock’s forced open mouth.  Spittle ran down from the gag and dripped onto the floor below them.  Molly stared at him, wide eyed and silent.

He removed the whip from Sherlock’s shoulders and took the lead loaded handle into his palm again, started moving it from side to side along the floor, letting the energy mount into a wave.  When he’d built up the hairpin, he threw the whip so it wrapped around Sherlock’s bound arms.  Generally this technique was benign; most of the energy from the crack dissipated before the whip coiled on itself—the sort of psychologically intimidating but essentially harmless maneuver reserved for Irene’s ilk—but with Sherlock hanging in a strappado suspension, it was a different matter entirely.  It wrenched him around and sent him spinning again, and he gave his first, true, broken scream of pain.  Jim paused, savoring it, then did it again, wrapping Sherlock’s hips this time and following up instantly with a cruel, cutting stroke to his buttocks.  He continued, luxuriating in Sherlock’s shreiks and this new level of complexity.

Like most true single-tail aficionados, Jim honed his skills by snuffing candle flames and cutting playing cards, but he much preferred striking moving targets.  Anticipating Sherlock’s swaying movements, timing his strokes, flicking the whip across whatever span of flesh he could catch as his body turned, was challenging, _fun_.  Almost like hitting a piñata, he thought, realizing that if he continued to beat him, Sherlock would, in a manner of speaking, ‘fall out.’  He envisioned Sherlock’s shoulders over-rotating, popping forward, his hands slipping further behind him, pulling his arms almost vertical, and he giggled.

And then he paused, let the whip hairpin at his side until its momentum dissipated, because he really didn’t want to break his new toy completely, not yet.  He took stock of Sherlock.  He was definitely hanging in his binds now, and had undoubtedly torn muscle fibers in his rotator cuffs, but both of his shoulders were still in their sockets.  Jim draped the whip over Sherlock’s neck again and wrapped his arms around him.  Sherlock groaned in relief as Jim took his weight, positioned his hanging head over his shoulder, let him drool on it as though he were an infant.  He snapped his fingers, and Moran unfastened the rope from the scaffold with apparent disappointment; he dropped the rope, and Sherlock cried out as his wrists fell down and struck his buttocks.  Jim bristled at the presumption; only he was allowed to hurt Sherlock.  He lowered him to his feet slowly, pressing Sherlock’s torn torso to his own, staining his shirt red.  The fabric dampened as Sherlock’s blood soaked through to his skin.  Jim cupped his face with both his hands and pressed their foreheads together, listening to Sherlock’s ragged breathing.

“Had enough?” he whispered.  “Shall I give you a break, play with Molly for a while?”

He loosened the gag and pulled it down around Sherlock’s neck, kissing the spots at the corners of his mouth where the leather had scraped his skin raw.

Sherlock struggled to catch his breath, popping his jaw.  His eyes still had the black look from before.  “No,” he said, and then added, “Sir.”

Jim smiled.  “Exactly what I wanted to hear, my love,” and kissed him.


	8. You See Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter depicts intense humiliation. Mind the tags. Discretion is advised.

It was the second time Sherlock had offered himself in her stead, and yet Molly found herself incapable of gratitude.  The only thing Molly could think, as each new mark appeared on Sherlock’s skin—the bruises from Jim’s blows and bites, the cuts from the knife, the blood blisters and lash marks from the whip—was of his body on a slab, of herself rolling the sheet back to show John and Mycroft the damage.  Would there be accusation in their eyes?  Pity?  Because after Sebastian had pulled Sherlock off his feet—and Molly had quailed at that, as a physician she knew that meant dislocation or subluxation of the shoulders, brachial plexus injury, possible localized paralysis, even asphyxiation, if Jim left him hanging long enough—Jim appeared to have lost all control, striking with abandon, wringing screams from Sherlock and _giggling_.

Jim had stopped the beating for the moment; he was cradling Sherlock’s battered body against his chest.  He pressed their foreheads together, murmuring to him and kissing the sides of his mouth.  Sherlock’s chin was wet with blood and saliva, and Molly felt ashamed to look at him, and guilty for feeling ashamed.  A dead, heavy feeling settled in her stomach; a cold crept into her body that wasn’t from the floor.  Jim would start again, and the next time, he might not stop, might not be able to stop.

“Untie him.”  Jim said to Moran as he let go of Sherlock, plopping him over the table on which he’d stored all the rope.  Even with its support, Sherlock’s knees buckled, and he almost fell to the floor before Sebastian grabbed him and steadied him against the table, pressing his thighs against Sherlock’s hamstrings, pushing his hips into its wooden edge.  Molly found the position disquieting, but Sebastian seemed focused on Sherlock’s binds.  He freed Sherlock’s purple hands—the sight of them made Molly’s mouth dry—and begain undoing the knots up the length of his arms, pulling the ropes quickly enough they probably burned his skin even through the torn remnants of his shirt sleeves.  Moran unbuttoned Sherlock’s cuffs and ripped them off, rolling his shoulders roughly as he did so, which made Sherlock moan and slump further into the table.  Molly pressed her breasts into her thighs, tucked her chin between her knees, and clutched her elbows.

Jim returned to his table of toys, and Molly felt her hands go clammy; her fingers tingled until she realized he was opening a perfectly ordinary package of plastic water bottles.  He cracked the seal on one and took a sip, and Molly became suddenly aware that she hadn’t had anything to drink for hours.  She found herself unable to take her eyes off Jim as he drank.  He stopped, and stared at her, smiling knowingly.

“Thirsty?” he asked.  Molly didn’t see the point of lying, so she nodded.  To her surprise, he took another bottle from the case and threw it at her.  She wasn’t fast enough to catch it; it bounced off of her knees, rolling across the floor, and she scrambled after it, seized it with shaking fingers.  She twisted the cap off and was about to take a sip when she stopped, eyes on Sherlock.

“Oh.”  Jim smiled.  “How polite.”  He took another swig of his own water.  “Molly doesn’t want to drink without you, Sherlock.”

Moran had released Sherlock from his binds, and he sprawled bonelessly against the table leg.  He angled his head towards her, saying nothing, but Molly understood his meaning.  She was being completely irrational; she should be taking every opportunity to hydrate herself, since she had no idea when Jim might offer them anything to drink again.  Molly gulped the water down, grateful that it was room temperature.  The air in the crumbling building was cold, and smelled of damp.  Only after she had drunk half the bottle did it occur to her that she might need to pee again, and it had been bad enough the first time, with the two goons waiting outside the loo door, and she didn’t want to think about what might happen if she had to go now, so she left the rest of the water untouched.

Jim opened another box on the table, took out an apple, and cut himself a slice with a knife—a folding blade—not the one he’d used to cut Sherlock.  He leaned against the table and ate the fruit directly from the blade.  Molly boggled at the notion that a person could go from torturing someone in one moment to _snacking_ the next.  Sherlock watched Jim out from under his locks of sweat-soaked hair, staring at the apple so intently Molly wondered if he was hungry—and if Sherlock was hungry, he hadn’t eaten anything in days, which meant he was hurtling towards an endorphin and muscle fatigue fueled blood sugar crash.  Jim didn’t offer to share his apple, but she was sure she couldn’t have eaten anything in any case.  Molly had always had a strong stomach, even before she’d gone into pathology, but the sight of Sherlock dangling from his wrists with his shoulders hyperextended had been nauseous.

“Come, pet, I’m sure you’re thirsty, too.”  Jim crossed to Sherlock, and bent down, cupping his chin.  “Beg me for water.”

Molly was torn; she didn’t want to see Sherlock degrade himself, and yet, at the same time, she hoped he would put aside his pride in the name of self-preservation, as he’d silently admonished her to do.

Sherlock drew himself into a kneeling position and lowered his head.  “Please, Sir,” he asked, “may I have water?”

Jim rolled his eyes.  “Oh come on.  I know you can beg more convincingly than _that_.”

Sherlock kowtowed, placing his fingers on the concrete in front of them, pressing his forehead to the floor between them.  “Please,” he said, voice thicker, speaking to the ground.

“Better,” Jim murmured.  “Not good enough.”

Sherlock inched his fingers forward, still prostrate, and placed his hands on either side of Jim’s shoes.  He bent his head forward and licked the black leather.

Jim lifted Sherlock’s chin with his toe, and for a moment Molly was terrified he was going to kick his teeth in.  “Lick the sole,” he said, “and _beg_.”

Sherlock did, and Molly thought she would be sick.  He held Jim’s gaze and drew his tongue over the dirty leather in long, suggestive strokes, and she realized this is how he must have looked earlier, when he’d serviced Jim.  She’d been bound at the time and too drugged to lift her head, and the blood had been roaring so loudly in her ears it had been difficult for her to hear, though she’d understood enough to work out what he must have done.  But she hadn’t _seen_ it.

“Please, Sir?  Just a swallow?”

Molly remembered the choked, gagging sounds he’d made before, and her stomach turned over.  The Sherlock she knew would never abase himself this way for water.  She’d seen him work in the lab for twelve hours straight without drinking anything; even assuming it had been days, she was fairly certain he was stubborn enough to die of thirst before he’d grovel before Jim, if it were only the two of them.  He was begging for _her_ , to keep Jim’s attention focused on him.  She searched again for gratitude, and again, found nothing.

“One swallow,” Jim affirmed, taking a long sip of water and setting the bottle on the table.  He seized Sherlock’s hair, pulled him up on his knees, and leaned over him, pressing their mouths together, opening Sherlock’s with his.

Sherlock sputtered, water running down his chin, coughing violently.

Jim struck his face again, this time with a closed fist, hard enough Molly was certain he would have fallen over if Jim hadn’t been gripping his hair with his other hand.

“You had your opportunity to drink _water_ ,” Jim hissed, his voice low, menacing.  He put his lips against Sherlock’s ear, and Molly strained hers; she couldn’t hear what Jim was whispering, but his pupils were blown so wide his eyes were black, and they glittered in a way that made all the hairs on her arms and legs stand up, as though they were bending to listen, too.

Sherlock’s reply was inaudible, but Molly could read his swollen lips.   _Yes, Sir_.

Jim undid his zip and took his cock into his hand again.  He was still flaccid, but Molly felt dread curdling in her belly at the thought that Jim’s refractory period might really be short enough that he could assault Sherlock again so soon.  Sherlock parted his lips, resignation written on his face, and Jim slipped himself between them, burying both his hands in Sherlock’s hair, pulling him flush with his groin.

“If you spill so much as a drop, Molly will lick it off the floor.  Do you understand?”

Sherlock tilted his head forward slightly, the smallest of nods, and Jim let out a sigh and looked down at him.  He widened his stance slightly and rolled his shoulders, closing his eyes and tilting his head back; a hint of a smile played across his lips before his wet, pink tongue darted over them.  Sherlock gagged.  Jim tightened his grip in his hair with one hand while the other caressed his already bruising cheek with mock tenderness.  Sherlock’s adam’s apple rose and fell rhythmically as he swallowed; he kept his eyes on Jim’s all the while.

The acrid, metallic taste of her own revulsion filled her throat, which clenched in sympathy, and Molly gripped her bottle with both hands, deforming the plastic, squeezing out water.  To her dismay, she found that she was furious with Sherlock, that rage was swelling in her throat, stinging her eyes.  Sherlock had asked her if she’d rather have sex in front of Jim, or risk his anger.  He hadn’t asked her if she could endure watching Jim torture and degrade him, endure knowing that _she_ was the reason he was accepting this abjection.

Jim pushed Sherlock off of him, and he rocked backward and knelt on his heels.  His eyes dropped to the floor, color blooming in his cheeks as he licked his lips.  Jim mussed his hair and patted him on the head, as though he were a dog.  “See, you can be neat when properly motivated.”

Apparently, all Jim had to do to _motivate_ Sherlock was threaten her, and he would submit to anything, regardless of how dehumanizing, without thought for whether Molly wouldn’t have gladly changed their places.  The bitter irony was that Molly had often wished that Sherlock were more considerate, and now that he was trying to be, she felt resentment instead of thanks.  She stared at the water pooling at her knees where she’d spilled it, and hated herself.

“I’m going to bind you again,” Jim said, turning his back on Sherlock and walking towards his table.  “When I come back, you had better be on your feet.”

Sherlock struggled, his knees wobbling, and Molly realized he couldn’t use his arms to push himself up, and cringed.  He managed, though his eyes and jaw clenched with the effort, to get himself vertical by the time Jim returned with a short length of rope—thin, like the one he’d used on her hair—and stood behind him.

“Hands on your head.”

Sherlock gingerly complied, grimmacing as he did so, his face contorting.  He laced his fingers together, tilting his head back, chin raised.

Jim unhooked his fingers and pulled Sherlock’s hands closer together, crossing his wrists behind his neck.  The position forced his head down, and was clearly a torture on his already abused shoulders.  Jim tied him speedily, and pushed him forward, past Molly, towards the chair behind her.  Molly turned, eyes fixing on Sherlock’s hands; his fingers worked in his binds, clenching and unclenching, his wrists already raw from the ropes earlier.  Molly’s own skin itched where the rough fibers had rubbed against it, and she realized the thinner rope would abrade the skin more quickly.

At Jim’s behest, Sebastian moved some of the plastic pallets from a corner of the room and stacked them in front of the scaffold.  Moran went about his task efficiently, but cracked the pallets down on top of one another with more force than was necessary; the impact echoed off the walls of the enormous space.  Afterwards, he hauled over the chair Sherlock and Jim had each sat in earlier, and positioned it on top.  Jim dragged a stumbling Sherlock, who bashed his shin into the pallets, up to the chair and pushed him backwards into it. Sherlock collapsed into the dark brown leather with a cry, and Molly realized the buttons on the upholstery probably pushed into his wounded back.

He wriggled into a seated position, and even bloodied and bruised as he was, the combination of the stately chair and Sherlock’s natural elegance made him look almost regal.  He still wore the same, defiant expression Molly had seen on his features when the pillowcase had been removed from her head, albeit with a contusion on his cheekbone where Jim had punched him, and scabs forming on his raw, bitten lips.  He spread his knees, placed his bare feet flat on the pallets, and sat upright, bringing his chest and chin forward.  For a moment, Molly was reminded of the photographs in the _Daily Express_ of Jim in the Tower of London, enthroned and wearing the crown jewels.

Molly wasn’t fooled by Sherlock’s display of resistance, though, and she doubted Jim was either.  There was strain showing around his eyes, and his legs had none of the coiled energy they’d had before.  Molly’s back was aching, and she’d only been rocking on the floor; Sherlock had been suspended from the scaffold in a Palestinian Hang.  Molly had autopsied a refugee who’d sought asylum in England after being tortured—whomever he’d been running from had caught him anyway.  She remembered the torn ligaments, the winged scapulae.

Jim stood over Sherlock, smiled, and kissed him again.  Sherlock always parted his lips when Jim did that, made his mouth soft, receptive.  But he never kissed back.  There was no telling what it was exactly that Jim felt for Sherlock, but she could sense he wanted to be kissed back.  Molly felt pleased, somehow, that Sherlock didn’t.  It seemed like a victory.

Frustrated, Jim pushed him deeper into the chair, and Sherlock moaned at Jim’s weight on his shoulders.  Jim put his hands under Sherlock’s knees and pushed his legs backwards until they met his chest, forcing the air out of him.  Jim let go, and Sherlock left his legs in the air while Jim pulled his hips forward until his buttocks were at the edge of the seat.  The position exposed him to a degree that made Molly squirm.

Jim brought another length of narrow rope and tied a cuff around Sherlock’s lower thigh, bringing his leg out and down onto the armrest.  He ran the rope behind the chair—the ornate, rounded back was far too high for Sherlock to have hope of moving the rope over it—and did the same on the other side.  Jim stood back to admire his handiwork; he had pulled Sherlock more than halfway down the chair, which pushed his head forward, forcing his chin into his chest.  The backs of his thighs and buttocks, streaked with welts from the earlier whipping, were completely vulnerable to whatever new torment Jim intended for them.  The rope between the cuffs on his thighs had been left slack, and his wrists weren’t tied to anything but each other; Jim had tied him inescapably but left him with enough freedom of movement to squirm, which wouldn’t do anything but torque his shoulders and make the thin cord cut into his skin.  As if to prove that point, Jim raked his nails across the angry red blisters, pressing down on the points where blood pooled under the skin.  Sherlock whimpered, straining against his binds, pulling the cuffs on his thighs precariously close to his sciatic nerves as he circled his ankles.  Molly curled her toes against the concrete in sympathy.

“Sebastian, bring Molly here to give her a better look.” Jim stood up, and returned to his table to find some new tool of torment.  She felt Moran’s hands on her arms; his fingers were thin but surprisingly strong, and the palms of his hands were calloused.  He hauled her up, and she’d been sitting on the cold floor so long her legs had fallen asleep, and prickled as blood-flow was restored when she stood up.  She only had to stumble a few steps before Sebastian pushed the back of her head down, and she knelt on the pallets.  Jim returned with a velvet lined box containing three steel plugs in graduated sizes, each shaped like a radish with a curved tail and a loop on the end.  He picked up the smallest of these and held it out to her.  “Lick it,” he said, “and be thorough—this is the only lubricant he’s getting.”

She’d known for a while now where this was going, but Jim’s words settled onto her chest like stones crushing her lungs, which were leaden, and her heartbeat slowed, thudded dully in her ears.  The metal was cold, and banged against her teeth when Jim urged it between her lips.  She rolled her tongue to work up a bit of saliva, glad she’d drunk the water after all.

He wrapped his fingers in her hair and bent her over Sherlock’s arse, removing the toy from her mouth and placing it against his entrance.  His breath was hot against her ear, his voice thick.  “Spit.”

She couldn’t do it.  The horror welling in her spilled out of her eyes, and she shook her head from side to side, ignoring Jim’s hand twisting against her scalp.

“Believe me,” he menaced, “he’ll want you to.”

The full weight of his remark settled on her shoulders.  She realized that whatever she had felt when Sherlock had been inside her—afraid, ashamed, and yes, violated, though not by him—it hadn’t _hurt_.  Sherlock had been gentle with her, tender, even.  Jim would not give Sherlock the same consideration.  Molly pursed her lips together and spat, gripping the pallet as she did so, and Jim kissed her ear.

“Good girl.”   He stroked Sherlock’s cheek.  “Look at me, love.”

Sherlock opened his eyes, and they were black, furious, defiant; if he could have cut with them, Molly was sure he would have disemboweled Jim.

“So beautiful,” Jim murmured, kissing him again, biting his abused lower lip and pressing the toy into his anus.  Sherlock went limp, trying to relax, but the tension in his face was in conflict with the languor of his body; his brows drew together and his eyes squeezed shut, and Molly wanted to do the same, but found herself unable to tear her gaze from the steel bulb as it breached him, stretching him open until his sphincters clenched and snapped around the stem, pulling it inside.  Jim broke off the kiss and leaned back to observe, and Molly saw that Sherlock’s split lip had opened again; blood dribbled onto his chin.

Jim sighed, rolling his shoulders back, and turned towards Sebastian.  “Get Molly here into a box tie, would you?”

Sherlock started, writhing in his binds, and Jim smiled, running a hand over his stomach, tracing the faint line of dark hair down to his groin.  “Still so chivalrous, aren’t we, Sir Boasts-a-Lot?  Don’t worry.  I’ve no intention of fucking Maid Molly.”  Molly shuddered, realizing she felt no relief at all.  “I never fuck the same person more than once if I can help it.  But for you,” he moved his hand between Sherlock’s legs and gripped the handle of the toy, rocking it lightly inside him, “I could be persuaded to make an exception.”

He licked Sherlock’s testicles, running his tongue over the length of his cock, and Molly realized the toy had a darker purpose.  He was opening Sherlock, yes, but he was also stimulating his prostate.  Sherlock was becoming erect, involuntarily, like what Jim had done to her with the vibrator.

Molly’s thoughts were interrupted by Sebastian roughly pulling her arms behind her back, folding her arms on top of each other, palm to forearm.  He bound her wrists together first and brought the rope around her chest and upper back, wrapping it to hold her arms down, turning her around like a ballerina in a music box as he repeated the circle.  He paused at the armpit,  brought the rope under her arm and over the existing wraps, and Molly realized this was different than the movies, where villains bound their victims with big coils of rope around the torso that could be wriggled out of.  She had nowhere to go.

He lay the rope across her back and did the same on the other side, and, if that wasn’t enough, tied a second rope to the first and repeated the wraps below her breasts and lower biceps, locking the rope under the arm at each side again.  Lastly, he brought the rope over her shoulder and across her chest, making a V shape below her neck, pulling the bottom rope up snugly under her breasts as he crossed to her other side and secured it behind her.  It wasn’t tight, exactly, but it was restricting, and it drew more attention to her shape than she would have liked.  Sebastian set her down at the end of the pallet again, on her knees, and Jim worked his fingers under the ropes between her breasts and forced her to crawl closer to him and Sherlock.

“Why don’t you return the favor Sherlock did you earlier, dear,” he said, pushing her head forward, and Sherlock grunted in protest, turning his face away.  “Oh, and Molly, do try and work up a bit more excitement than you did with me, unenthusiastic blow jobs are bad for the ego.”

Her cheeks flushed at that; the last thing she wanted Sherlock to think about was her with Jim.

She lay her head on Sherlock’s belly—he had fewer cuts there than his chest—and Jim brushed her hair back from her face, watching her, and she blushed deeper.  Molly took a shaking breath; Jim was right, Sherlock had done this for her, had done this for _Jim_ , which was worse.  She could do it for him.  His cock was long and slim like the rest of his body, and light pink, and Molly licked her lips and put them around the head, and slid down.  Jim lay his right hand on the back of her head and directed her movements, though he didn’t make her gag, as he had Sherlock.  With his left, he worked the toy inside Sherlock.

Sherlock hissed, and Molly felt his cock jerk in her mouth.  She paused until Jim twisted her hair again.  She continued, slower this time, moving her lips along his length.  She couldn’t hold him steady with her hand, so she focused on the head; that was easiest at this angle, tracing slow circles over the top of the glans, pushing her tongue against the slit.  His taste was bittersweet.

Jim tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned to see he was holding another toy for her, the larger sibling to the one in Sherlock’s arse.  She sucked on it, but this time, when Jim pulled the first plug out, she spat _into_ Sherlock.  Again, Jim had been right; he would need everything she could give him, and this was no time to be squeamish.

Jim laughed, and there was no mirth in it.  “Look at what a filthy slut your Molly is, Sherlock.  Not a maid at all.”  He smacked Sherlock’s arse.  “I said _look_ at her.”

Sherlock met her eyes for the first time in hours, and his were all pupil, a pair of holes, windows into darkness.  They were vacant, empty—the challenge that had been in them when Jim had tied him to the chair had burned out.  

Jim pushed her head back down onto Sherlock, and she felt relieved not to have to look into his eyes anymore.  His cock jerked in her mouth as Jim forced the larger plug inside him.


	9. IOU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a rape scene from the perpetrator’s point of view.

Sherlock Holmes had only two pieces left on his board: a king, and a pawn with no hope of promotion.  Jim could see an easy, back rank checkmate in nine moves, and he was frankly annoyed by his opponent’s failure to raise his level of play.  Molly Hooper was the textbook definition of ordinary, and Sherlock, on whom he’d hung such high hopes, had turned out to be ordinary, too, reflexively putting himself between her and Jim in a banal, bourgeois way.  He’d expected that kind of response from John, who had left himself open to mate in order to put Jim in check with his little bearhug stunt at the pool; he’d anticipated reciprocation from Sherlock if he threatened John, which was why he’d selected Molly.  The game had seemed so promising at the start, when Molly had said all kinds of intriguing things about Sherlock while high on Pentothal.  Now, they were on course towards a predictable, Shakespearean end.  Jim could do only one thing to abrogate his disappointment in Sherlock, and that was to _punish_ him for it.

Punishing Sherlock for being ordinary was extraordinarily satisfying.  If Sherlock failed to show variegation in his character, Jim would pull color to the surface of his achromatic skin.  If Sherlock wouldn’t drop the hero’s mantle from his shoulders, Jim would tear his shoulders from their sockets.  If Sherlock insisted on wearing his heart outside his chest like the bloody Tin Man, Jim would flay open his ribcage and oblige him.

"Are you enjoying this as much as I am, pet?" he whispered.  He let his lips drift to the tendon at the crease of Sherlock’s thigh, and bit down, hard.  Sherlock bucked into Molly’s mouth, and she gagged; her technique left a lot to be desired, and as amusing as it was to watch Sherlock’s reactions to her, a cock that magnificent really deserved proper attention.  Jim pulled Molly’s head back and took over, luxuriating in Sherlock’s taste, letting his shaft fill his throat, swallowing him all the way to the base on the first go.  He put his hands under Sherlock’s hips and pulled him to the very edge of the chair, rocked him into his throat, and, relaxing still further, took his bollocks into his mouth for good measure, tongue lapping the soft, loose skin of his scrotum.  He was good at this.  Better than anyone Sherlock had ever had, probably; he suspected the man’s sexual experiences mostly consisted of giving head to closeted uni blokes who lacked manners or gratitude.  And he loved the thought that the reptile part of Sherlock’s brain was powerless to do anything but enjoy him.

Sherlock had nothing but disdain for his body.  He saw it as inferior to the mind, a container, a prison for it.  Jim knew better.  The body _was_ the mind.  The brain was a slave to endorphin and dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, and, most relevant to their current circumstances, noradrenaline.  Fight, flight, fear, pleasure, reward.  Control the body, and you could make the mind dance on strings.  He would make Sherlock dance, and then he would cut the strings and leave him lifeless.

For the moment, he was content to simply fill his throat with Sherlock, rolling his eyes into his head, not moving at all.  When he started again, it was only to make swirling motions around the glans with his tongue, arching the metal bulb into Sherlock’s prostate again as he did so.  It was the easiest way to remind him just how much the body was in charge, how Jim could coerce arousal, force pleasure, which he suspected Sherlock hated even more than he hated the pain.

“I haven’t gotten to see you come yet, Sherlock.  You got Molly off without finishing yourself—very chivalrous of you, but disappointing for me.  Don’t worry, though, Molly’s going to make it up to you.”

He grabbed the twist of rope between Molly’s breasts and jerked her to her feet, frogmarched her to the edge of the chair and held her in place while he lifted her ankle over Sherlock’s torso.  She was graceless, and would have stepped on Sherlock if he hadn’t guided her, setting her foot to the left of him on the seat of the chair.  He tapped the back of her other thigh and she brought that leg up as well, less awkwardly this time, and he shifted her from a squat onto her knees, sliding her calves under Sherlock’s thighs.

Jim stood behind Molly and caressed her breasts; Sebastian had done a decent job, put them on rather fine display.  He pulled her nipples until she gave a small squeak of protest, kissing her neck as he did so, brushing aside the mass of tangled hair.  He ran his hand down her torso towards the triangle of hair between her legs, probing between them with his fingers.  Not quite wet enough.  

He gripped the center column above Molly’s bound forearms and pushed her forward, then put his hands between her thighs and spread them as wide as the sides of the chair would allow, bringing her cunt down over Sherlock’s face.  He reached between Molly’s legs and seized Sherlock’s chin, pushing his lips against her.  Sherlock grunted, but complied.  Jim pressed his torso against Molly’s back, peering over her shoulder, watching Sherlock’s plump, swollen mouth go to work from her perspective.  The soft lines of Molly’s thighs made a perfect frame for his cheekbones.  His pale eyes were wide and pleading, focussed entirely on Molly, who held his gaze for a moment and then looked away.  Jim chuckled and took advantage of her exposed neck, licking the length of it and biting her earlobe.  She went rigid against him as he sucked it between his teeth, breaking capitalaries.

Jim turned his attention back to Sherlock, reaching back and wrapping his fingers around his prick, bringing him from semi hardness to full with a few rough strokes.  He lifted Molly away from Sherlock and clutched her to his chest, slid his fingers inside her folds, slicked wet from Sherlock’s ministrations, and pulled up on her pubic bone and ground the heel of his hand against her clit, as Sherlock had done earlier.  Sherlock watched—no, devoured them—his eyes black and violent again.  Jim pulled his fingers out of Molly and transferred them to her neck, squeezing lightly, and grasped Sherlock with his other hand, rubbing his glans teasingly across her lips.  Sherlock’s eyes continued to bore into his.  Jim grinned, showing his teeth, and slipped the head of Sherlock’s prick into Molly, lining them up, then let go and pushed the plug into him while he pulled Molly down.  Sherlock moaned once, then bit his lip, and was silent.

The two of them were now locked together; Molly’s weight pinned Sherlock to the chair even more stringently than the ropes, and his bent legs effectively trapped her in her kneeling position. Jim’s hands worked down to Molly’s hips, making slow circles, driving her movements.

“You should be thanking me for this, Molly.  I’m giving you what you’ve always wanted: Sherlock Holmes underneath you.”  He slapped her buttock, deliberately aiming for the cane welts.

She hissed in pain, but her movements became more assertive.  

Jim leaned forward, licking into her ear again.  “Ride him how you rode me when you were pretending I was him.  You were almost beautiful when you were imagining Sherlock’s prick inside you.”

Sherlock closed his eyes.

Jim released Molly and dropped to a crouch in front of Sherlock, reached between his legs and pulled out the toy, letting the metal bulb stretch his entrance, pushing the small of Molly’s back down to signal her to keep moving as he did so.  He watched the sphincter muscles clench, licked a finger, and pressed it against them; they yielded easily now, and it took all his willpower to pick up the third plug instead of unfasten his trousers.  He licked it himself this time—the metal was cold in his mouth—and then he licked Sherlock.  It was a bit awkward, with Molly’s body so close, but if he pushed her forward against Sherlock’s abdomen and turned his head just so, he could manage.  Sherlock was loose enough that he could slide his tongue inside; he tasted of musk and loam and _helplessness_ , and that was the most scrumptious flavor of all.  Jim fucked Sherlock with his tongue, curling it in him, relishing the taste of his most intimate of places, until it was more than he could stand.

He pulled back and pressed the largest toy into Sherlock’s arsehole, angling it to scrape his prostate, and the man actually thrashed, or tried to, anyway, he only succeeded in thrusting himself deeper into Molly, who made a strangled cry, whimpering into Sherlock’s chest.  Jim stood up, seized her hair, and pulled her vertical, locking his arm around her throat, cutting of her air.  For a few moments she continued to grind her hips, then, as he maintained his grip, she began to struggle against him, writhing on Sherlock, who moaned through gritted teeth.

“Is this good for you, Sherlock?” he taunted.  “Can you come like this?”

Sherlock twisted in his binds.

Jim planted a kiss on Molly’s temple, fondling her breast with his free hand.  “What about you, love?  Oxygen deprivation making things more intense?”

Molly clawed at his stomach with her bound hands, and he grinned.  “That’s the spirit.”

“Please—” Sherlock begged.

“Please, what?”

“Please, Sir.  Let her go.  I’ll do anything you need.  Anything at all.”

Jim frowned.  It was a strange choice of words.  Sherlock needed _him_ —needed a nemesis, an adversary, a demon to keep him on the side of the angels—because he was too weak to let himself reach his full potential.  Jim didn’t need Sherlock; the man had been a diversion, a distraction—perhaps his favorite distraction, but he had every intention of killing him once he’d won the game, and after, life would go on.

“You’re the one who needs _me_ , Sherlock,” Jim hissed, moving his hand from Molly’s breast to the toy, rocking it into Sherlock’s prostate.  “Tell me.”

“Yes.  I need you, Jim.  I’ve always needed you.  I _am_ you.”

He rolled his eyes.  “Yes, you want to shake my hand in hell, I’ve heard that already.  Stop _boring_ me.”

“I need you to fuck me, Jim.”

“That’s better.”

“I need you inside me, Jim.  I need your cock.  Please.  Sir.”

Jim pulled the toy out almost all the way, stopped, and pushed it in again, teasing.  Sherlock growled, and Jim chuckled, and this time he did pull it out, loosening his choke hold on Molly.  She coughed and sputtered, crumpling forward against Sherlock’s shoulder, eliciting a cry of pain.

“I’m sorry,” Molly stammered, struggling to pull her weight off him, and Sherlock curled his body forward and kissed her forehead, making shushing sounds.

Jim smirked, letting them have their moment while he put the toy back in it’s box.  He returned to the chair and unfastened his trousers.  He was painfully hard, now; he gave himself a few, quick strokes when he pulled his cock free of his pants, pushed the waistband down under it.  He rested his right hand on Sherlock’s thigh and guided his prick into him with his left.  He met with almost no resistance; the last plug was actually thicker than he was, and he got most of his length in on the first try—until his body bumped into Molly’s.  He seized her hair and turned her face into the chair, grinding her cheek into the leather upholstery buttons.  He thrust a second time, deeper, and stopped, closing his eyes, focusing on the heat of Sherlock’s body, the dull throb of his pulse in the veins inside him.

“This is what you needed, isn’t it?” He brought his other hand to Sherlock’s face, lifted his thumb to his lips.  “This is what you’ve always needed.”

Sherlock sucked Jim’s thumb into his mouth, but said nothing.

Jim tugged on Molly’s binds—he realized that she was sobbing, silently—and brought her into an upright position, moving his hands to her waist.  He coordinated their movements, pulling her down onto Sherlock in time with his thrusts into him.  He kept a slow, steady rhythm, two beats to a stroke, first arching up to drag across Sherlock’s prostate, and then pounding into it.  Sherlock shook his head from side to side, eyes clenched shut, biting his bleeding lip, struggling to keep back his groans and failing.  It was beautiful.

Jim removed the folding knife from his pocket, watching Sherlock’s face intently; his entire body went rigid when he heard the snap of the spring loaded blade locking into place.  The gray green eyes flew open, watching him warily.

Jim pulled Molly’s hair back and exposed her neck, tracing the line of her jaw, her larynx, the hollow between her collarbones.  “What if I was to slit Molly’s throat?”

Sherlock wrenched himself up into a stomach crunch, his neck cording with the effort.

“You wouldn’t, Jim.  You never get your hands dirty.  This is our game, our problem; it’s nothing to do with Molly.”

Jim laughed.  “It’s _everything_ to do with Molly.  I told you I’d burn the heart out of you, Sherlock.”  He placed the point of the knife against Molly’s left breast, twisting until he drew blood.

She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face.

“ _Stop it_ ,” Sherlock demanded, and the sound was infinitely sweeter than his play at begging moments before; his genuine attempt to give orders from a position of no authority was orders of magnitude more entertaining than his feigned submission.

“Or you’ll do what?”  Jim grinned, twisting the knife into Molly’s breast again.  A red drop trickled down the length of the blade and dropped onto Sherlock’s belly, red on white.

“Or I won’t play.”  Sherlock leaned on every syllable, emphasizing that posh accent of his.  “I’ll bite off my tongue.”

“Sherlock, please, don’t talk like that,” Molly blurted.

“Shhh,” he whispered.

“Don’t fret, Molly dear.  We’ve both seen that Sherlock doesn’t have the bollocks for suicide.”

“Have we?”  Sherlock scowled.  “I took a fifty-fifty chance at suicide because I was _bored_ , or have you forgotten?  You think I wouldn’t go through with it to beat you?”

“Ah, but you thought you were playing our late friend Mr Hope, not the odds, and you thought you were going to win.  So certain of your own cleverness.  Doesn’t count, sorry.”  He snapped his pelvis into Sherlock, making him moan, then switched from thrusting to stirring him, moving Molly’s hips in slow circles as he did so.

For a few, blissful minutes, Sherlock looked lost, but he eventually regained composure, eyes hardening again.  “I’m not bluffing.”

“Neither am I.”  Jim clutched Molly’s hair, arching her neck back, and ran the blade of the knife under her jaw.

“I’m going to count backwards from five, and then, either you are going to release Molly, after which, you have my word, I will submit to any depravity you can imagine—or, I’m going to bleed out, right here in your chair, which I suspect is a rather quicker end than you had in mind.”

“Ooooh,” Jim giggled.  “Replaying our first game?  I’m so glad I didn’t kill you, that I saved it for something special.  And no, you biting your tongue off doesn’t qualify, though you do score points for creativity.  Perhaps I’ll let you choose what game we play next—once I’ve called your bluff, after which I will reacquaint you with the spider gag and throttle Molly while both of us fuck you.  I suspect, if I time it right, the combination of her death throes and my prick inside you will make you come, and you will keep your eyes on me when you do, or I will gouge them out.  Because she can’t be allowed to continue—thanks to you, she knows far too much—and because _I owe you_ , Sherlock Holmes.”  He pressed the blade into Molly’s throat, drawing blood.  “Let’s see who blinks first.”


	10. Countdown

_“Five.”_

* * *

 

 

 

13th September, 6:49 PM

 

“Ms Hooper—” the voice calling her name was male, bland, posh, and non-threatening—calculatedly so.

She froze, searching for the sound, and her eyes fixed on a black Mercedes at the kerb, back door open, engines running.

“Let me offer you a lift,” said the voice from within the car.  It wasn’t a question.

“I’d rather not.”

The man slid along the back seat of the car until he reached the open door, letting the streetlights catch his face.  His features were sharp—pinched, even—and his hair was combed neatly and parted at the side.  He stuck his foot out of the door, and Molly caught a glimpse of argyle socks protruding from shiny, leather shoes that probably cost more than her monthly wages, before the cuff of his even more expensive looking trousers dropped back over them when he stood up.  Molly’s instinct told her to run back into Bart's, but she found her feet were glued to the pavement.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, stepping out of the car.  “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”  He extended his hand.

Molly regarded it as though it were infected.

He dropped it back to his side.  “My name is Mycroft Holmes.  I believe you’re acquainted with my brother, Sherlock.”

Molly’s heartbeat subsided a bit, but she remained wary.  She did, in fact, remember Sherlock ranting to John about his brother Mycroft once; that didn’t mean this man was whom he claimed to be.

“I’ve just been texting him.  Why don’t I send him a picture of you and ask if you’re his brother?”

He reached into his overcoat and removed his wallet.  “I’d really prefer you didn’t.  My brother and I don’t have the most amicable relationship; I don’t think it would please him to know we’ve met.”  He flashed her his ID, and it was somewhat hard to see, but she did read ‘Mycroft Holmes.’

In spite of herself, Molly felt her wariness subsiding. “Why?”

“He doesn’t appreciate my concern for his well-being.  Please.  Speak with me.  Enter 999 in your phone and keep your finger on it if it makes you more comfortable.  I’ll only take a few moments of your time.”

Against anything she still had resembling judgment, Molly climbed into the car while he held the door.

He slid into the seat beside her and shut it behind them, and the driver began moving immediately.

“So, what do you have to say that’s so important it warrants kidnapping me?”

“I’m merely giving you a lift to your flat, Ms Hooper.”

“Molly.  If you really are Sherlock’s brother.”

“Very well, Molly.  I understand you do Sherlock favors from time to time.”

Molly felt her ears grow warm.  “No.  I mean, sometimes he asks me for help with things, but I don’t do favors for him.”

“What’s in the cooler?”

“Thumbs for Sherlock,” she admitted, mortified.

“All I’m asking, Molly, is that if my brother asks you for a favor, that you do one for me—namely, tell me what it is.”

She bit her lip.  “You mean, spy on him?”

“Help me keep him out of trouble.”

She frowned.  “Even if I didn’t think it was wrong, which I do, _I couldn’t_.”

Mycroft sighed, looking put-upon. “He does seem to inspire loyalty, my brother.”

The car continued on towards her flat.  Molly was more than a little unnerved that he hadn’t asked for an address. “I’m sorry, can you drop me at the tube instead?”

“Of course.  Your thumb delivery.”

He opened the door for her at Marylebone station, offering his hand again, and this time, she shook it.  He also handed her a business card.  It was heavy, quality stock, with no name, just a phone number.  “If you change your mind.”

“Thank you,” Molly said, and, tucking the bag and cooler under her arms, headed down the stairs to the tube.  She dropped the card into the nearest bin—but she memorized the number first—and felt disloyal.

* * *

 

_“Four.”_

 

* * *

 

 

 

16th March, 2:48 PM

 

“So, here we are, Sherlock Holmes, HQ.” Jim muttered into the mic as he crossed the threshold into 221B’s sitting room, panning the tiny surveillance camera in front of him.  It was a study in entropy, every surface cluttered with books, sheet music, lab safety equipment.  

“Boring, boring.”  A cow skull hung on the wall.  “He’s put headphones on it, good god,” Jim muttered.  As décor, it was atrocious—but its eyes might conceal a camera.

The bookshelves were more promising.  “Books, books, books.”  He wondered which of them Sherlock read regularly, and which were just for ambiance, and deduced based on the dustline that the ones on top shelf of the bookcase to the left of the fireplace probably weren’t disturbed often.  The mantelpiece caught his eye—a knife had been jammed through a stack of letters, hard enough to stick into the wood.

“Temper, temper, temper, ” he whispered.  The image of Sherlock throwing his weight behind the blade stirred a twinge in his belly. His fingers curled, then extended, and he involuntarily reached towards a skull on the mantel, but stopped before touching it.  “I wonder what your skull would look like on my wall?” he wondered.  A painting on the wall featured yet another—“more skulls, more skulls”—rather a _theme_ going on here.

Jim switched the camera off and crossed back through the food safety nightmare that was the kitchen/laboratory into Sherlock’s bedroom.  It was clear that the sitting room and kitchen were where he lived, and that Sherlock saw his bedroom as a place to sleep, and dress, and nothing else.  It was going to be much more difficult to hide cameras here.  Very little adorned the walls—

“The periodic table, seriously Sherlock?” Jim scowled at the framed poster.  “Would have thought you had that memorized.”  He wondered if Sherlock stared at it while he wanked.  He turned towards Sherlock’s bed, brushing his fingertip across the rumpled sheets—extra long staple Egyptian cotton—supple against his skin, resisting the urge to lie in them, to immerse himself in Sherlock’s scent.

In the end, he decided on the bookshelves under the sound player for the camera.  It provided a perfect view of the bed; while he was fairly certain nothing libidinous happened here, he was curious about what Sherlock did when he slept—if he tossed and turned or lay still, if he snored, if he talked in his sleep.

Whether or not Sherlock talked, Jim would make sure he listened.  He intended to hack the sound player itself, and use it to broadcast his subliminal audio recordings—those had been even more fun to edit than his video narrative of Sir Boasts-a-Lot.  He planned on watching the video feed and playing the audio during Sherlock’s REM cycles to maximize their effectiveness, but he would be relying primarily on his new aerosol toxin to make Sherlock’s subconscious mind more malleable.   

Jim was pleased he’d decided not to pull his sponsorship of Frankland’s fear toxin project when he’d become ambivalent about it.  The effects were, granted, useful—and amusing—but it was about as subtle as a pole axe.  He’d mostly kept Frankland as a client in order to have eyes and ears inside Baskerville, and once he had been exposed, Jim had lost even that.

Or he would have, except that Sherlock’s high handed, aggressive demeanour had made him an enemy in Stapleton, and she subscribed to the Bedouin philosophy that the enemy of her enemy was her friend.  She’d come to him, and let him know that she had continued Frankland’s research, and had taken it in an exciting new direction—a far more sophisticated compound which provided all of the suggestibility with none of the more obvious side effects.  Jim had been pleased with the results of her early experiments; Corporal Lyons had carried out almost all of the instructions she’d given him via subliminal audio after she’d introduced the toxin into his quarters.  Major Barrymore had proved less pliable, but then, he was so thick, Jim was surprised anything got through to him when he was awake.

Jim was confident in his knowledge of Sherlock’s psychological vulnerabilities.  Sherlock needed to be a hero, and he needed everything he did to be clever, so Jim would provide him with an elegant solution which centered around his self-sacrifice: fake his suicide to save his friends.  Manipulating Sherlock’s senses so that he would also believe Jim had killed _himself_ , was just for irony.

Fortunately for Jim, the window was conveniently opposite Sherlock’s bed.  Better to administer the aerosol from outside, wouldn’t want Sherlock finding _that_.  The cameras, however, were no biggy; he intended to hack John’s blog and post his video footage, wait for the inevitable sweep, and return with Moran and plant them in a month or two when Sherlock believed he was safe again.  Even if Sherlock did happen to find a camera in his bedroom, after seeing the clip, he’d assume Jim’s interests were more prurient.

Jim strode back to the sitting room, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, and turned the camera on again.  Sherlock would see the cut in the footage, would deduce where he’d been.  He patted the skull fondly as he left.  “Alas, poor Sherlock,” he sighed.  “I knew him well.”

 

* * *

 

_“Three.”_

* * *

 

 

 

12th June, 2:16 AM

 

Molly sank down against the wall of her loo, feet braced against the under-sink cabinet, and buried her face in Toby’s fur.  Her heart was fluttering around in her chest like a bird frantic to escape its cage.  The scent of Moriarty’s wintergreen gum still clung to her nostrils; his whispered threats still hung in her ears.  At least there wasn’t a camera here, which was more than could be said for her bedroom or kitchen.  Jim had destroyed her router, cut the landline, stolen her mobile.

She giggled hysterically, fingers trembling in Toby’s fur.  Her soft-spoken, geeky boyfriend had turned out to be a serial killer, and yet, somehow, nothing had changed.  He still saw her only as a way to get to Sherlock.  Sherlock’s brother had seen her as a way to get to Sherlock.  Everyone seemed to think she could get through to Sherlock, except her.  She knew he’d never let her in.  Except—

_You do count.  You’ve always counted, and I’ve always trusted you._

When she’d told Mycroft she couldn’t betray Sherlock, she’d meant it literally.  She couldn’t lie to him.  Not even to protect him.  He would look straight through her, see treachery on her face as he’d seen desire, admiration, and yes, love, she could admit that to herself, now.  Jim expected her to go into work tomorrow and help Sherlock fake his death as though everything were fine, as though she were still his friend and confidant, the only person he trusted with his secret.

She couldn’t do it.  It was that simple.  Sherlock would see, and then the man who had come into Molly’s flat with Jim would shoot him.  Jim’s—accomplice? bodyguard?—was in some ways more terrifying than the man himself.  Moriarty was frightening the way a warehouse filled with volatile chemicals stored in corroding metal drums was frightening.  His associate was frightening the way a film badge dosimeter showing the wearer had been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation was frightening.  As she’d watched him help Jim set up the cameras, twisting wires with slender fingers, observing everything with dead, gray eyes, it had also occured to Molly that he superficially resembled Sherlock, though he was not so striking, and had lighter, ash-brown hair.  How Jim could ridicule her infatuation without irony was beyond her, as he was clearly so much further gone than she was.

She remembered their last, well, she couldn’t really call it a conversation, in this flat.  Both of them had been shouting; she was certain her neighbors had heard each of them accusing the other of thinking of Sherlock Holmes in bed.  Toby had fled to cower under the sofa, all his fur standing on end.  He’d never liked Jim, who had smiled blandly and said something about cats always knowing he was more of a dog person, but in retrospect, she never should have slept with anyone that Toby didn’t like.  

She paused, trying to think if Toby had hidden the whole time Jim and his silent companion had been in her flat.  He had been, she was certain of it now.  Toby had scampered to the loo the moment Jim had come through the door calling out, “Honey, I’m home!”

The faintest flurry of hope stirred in the churning mess that was her stomach.  She nuzzled Toby, intensely grateful now for his nasty habit of slipping out the door of her flat when she was carrying in the shopping.  Smiling, Molly un-clipped the GPS tracker from his collar and removed her shoe, stuffing it into the toe beneath her orthotic insoles.

 

* * *

 

_“Two.”_

* * *

 

 

 

12th June 10:23 AM

 

Mycroft sat in the backseat of the Mercedes, his umbrella across his knees, phone in hand, reading the status reports that had come in during his meeting.  He had loathed having to leave his brother’s case in the hands of analysts, but had been obliged to attend.  His phone rang, and he slid his thumb across the screen to answer.  “Yes?”

Anthea’s tone was cool, professional.  If she was distressed or discomforted, she kept it out of her voice, for which he was grateful.  

“The DNA matches what we have on record for Sherlock Holmes, Sir.  Also, there’s an 86.4% SNP match between the DNA from the blood sample taken during the autopsy and your own.  The decedent is your brother.”

Mycroft pressed his fingertips to his temples, trying to banish the pain pulsing behind his eyes.  “Run them again.”

“Already have, Sir.”  There was a pause.  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Mycroft had already heard that phrase six times today.  It had yet to cease feeling surreal.

“Chief Superintendent Gregson regrets to inform you that the body, along with all personal effects associated with it, are considered evidence in an ongoing investigation and cannot be released at this time.  He says he’s already bent the rules by releasing the tissue samples and the coroner's report.  You were supposed to request a copy in writing.  Shall I call in some favors higher up and get him overruled?”

“No.”

“Sir?”

He was annoyed, both that Anthea hadn’t seen the obvious, and that she had questioned him.  “You do my schedule; you know I’ve just come from a meeting with with Ambassador Bruhl, who flew from Washington—primarily to see his children, who are in hospital undergoing chelation therapy—but who made time in his calendar expressly to ask me how exactly it was that my brother, to whom I referred him, ended up being implicated in their kidnapping.  The conversation was quite uncomfortable, and I’ve no intention of having it again.  It would be impolitic of me to interfere with the Met’s investigation at this time.”

“Of course, Sir.”

_Your own brother, and you blabbed about his entire life to that maniac._

And he hadn’t done much to correct Moriarty’s narrative during his meeting.  That lie, a lie that Mycroft had helped him weave, had been too strong for him to unravel on such short notice.  There would be time later to clear his brother’s name, when he had the consulting criminal in his custody again.  Mycroft’s fingers curled around his umbrella.

“The body is in a freezer at St Bartholomew’s mortuary.  It will keep.  Our first priority is to _find James Moriarty_ , a point I thought I had made perfectly clear in the emergency meeting convened this morning.  Whatever the CCTV footage says, I do not believe that Sherlock was alone when he jumped off that rooftop.  Moriarty would have threatened him with something, had some kind of leverage, and I will expect any and all updates we have on what that might have been, as well as his possible whereabouts, upon my return to the office.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t much, Sir.  Our sources at New Scotland Yard grilled Kitty Riley, as requested, when she came in this morning to report the disappearance of ‘Richard Brook,’ but have determined that she knows nothing.  She claims that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson broke into her flat and threatened her and ‘Mr Brook’ around 8 PM yesterday evening, a fact which is corroborated by the CCTV footage.  She stated that he stayed with her that night but was gone from the flat by the following morning.  We have nothing showing him leaving the flat—or reappearing anywhere else, for that matter.  Ms Riley insists that Mr Holmes must have abducted him during the night before—this morning’s incident.”

Moriarty couldn’t afford to resurface as Richard Brook, not with Mycroft looking for him, but he was bound to the narrative he’d created.  He would need to end Richard Brook’s story.  “Keep looking for a body.”

“Our sources at hospitals and morgues haven’t come across any matching that description yet.  Speaking of morgues, do you want me to send over the coroner’s report from St Bart’s?”

He had yet to read it.  He’d been too preoccupied with cleaning up Sherlock’s latest— _his last_ —mess, one which, he admitted bitterly, hadn’t been entirely of his brother’s making.  “Please,” he said.

Anthea sent it as an email attachment; he let his thumb hover a moment longer than necessary over the paperclip icon before tapping it.  He skimmed the report: Fracture of the thoracolumbar junction.  Fracture of the right os calcis, left distal radius.  Fractured pelvis.  Fractured cranium.  Cause of death: suicide.  Prosector: Molly Hooper.  His limbs were suddenly light, his pulse fluttery.  He felt his breathing quicken, his mouth grow wet.

“Please tell me someone has interviewed Ms Hooper.”

“She’s on annual leave.  Left immediately after turning in the coroner’s report.  Said she was going to Bracknell to stay with her mother.  She bought a train ticket and we have a probable match on the CCTV at the station.”

“Find her.”  He scrolled rapidly through the document; the last page was the form he was to have signed, requesting a copy of the report.  His name was already filled in.  As was his phone number.   _Not_ the number he used on any documents accessible to the public.

A green shoot of something which might have blossomed into optimism, if Mycroft had allowed it, which he didn’t, germenated in his chest.  “You won’t find her in Bracknell.  I’ll not be returning to the office after all.  Have a team meet me at Ms Hooper’s flat.”

 

* * *

 

 

12th June, 7:03 PM

 

 _“One.”_ Sherlock felt the word in his mouth, his tongue thick and heavy as he touched it to his soft palate, but he didn’t hear it.  The report of the sniper rifle rang out over the sound of breaking glass, its echo drowned out by shouted commands, bursts of radio static, combat boots striking concrete, Molly’s high pitched shriek as Jim fell backwards, leaving a sudden feeling of emptiness in his body and a line of red across her throat.  Sherlock’s eyes flew to the observation deck, where the commandos who had rappelled off the roof were swinging through the shattering windows in a shower of falling glass.  The sniper whirled to face them, and the second shot rang out, knocking back one of the soldiers, bullet piercing the Kevlar armour.  Moran and the tattooed assassin had both drawn their weapons and were trading shots with the team on the deck.

Molly threw her body over his, pressing him into the chair.  A trickle of hot blood ran down his neck—not his.  A bullet ricocheted off the floor and embedded itself into the upholstery next to his elbow.  A shout of “Go, go, go!” was followed by the metallic clang of steel capped boots on stairs, the rustling and clinking body armour.  Over all these sounds, he heard the crisscross of gunfire, and low heaving sobs which he could have sworn were Molly’s, until the bullets stopped zinging, and he realized they were his own.

A set of arms came between his body and hers, and he thrashed in protest as she was torn from him, gnashing his teeth in rage at the black gloved hands on her body, twisting impotently in his binds.  For the second time this day, he caught a glimpse of a KA-BAR knife in his peripheral vision.  He kicked wildly, wailed as he was restrained by more gloved hands.  Even as his brain registered that the blade was sawing through the rope which connected his ankles behind the chair, the animal in his body lashed out.  His breaths came fast and shallow, spots swarmed across his vision, and blood beat against his ears until he was sure it would leak out of them; it was already leaking out of his eyes.

“Sherlock!”

The rope snapped, frayed ends thudding against the floor, and he was free of the chair.  He pulled his legs tight to his chest and rocked forwards, lurching into a seated position.  He pushed his feet against the pallet, trying to stand, but two sets of arms gripped his shoulders, one on each side, pushing him back down into the chair.  His torn muscles screamed in protest.  He tried to shake them off, but his wrists were still lashed behind his neck.

“Put the knife away; he’s panicking.”

He sucked for air, eyes darting, seeking the sound of the voice.  Behind him—he jerked his head, ran his elbow into the back of the chair, sending a tingling burst of pain up his ulnar nerve.

“Sherlock.  I’m here.  It’s going to be alright.”

A file drawer in his Mind Palace burst open, spilling its contents into his adrenaline addled brain.  “Mycroft?”

“It’s me.  I’m here.”

His brother walked around the chair, stood in front of him, and then dropped to one knee, bringing his face to Sherlock’s eye level.

He observed everything.  Circles under his eyes—no sleep in at least 36 hours.  Stubble—used an electric razor to save time in the morning instead of his usual blade.  Shoes scuffed—running across gravel.  Chewed fingernail on the hand reaching towards him—worry.  “Mycroft.”

“Sherlock.” His brother pulled him against his shoulder, stroking his hair and his still bound hands, soothing him as though he were a colicky infant, just as Jim had, when he’d held him as he’d hung in anguish.  He retched, diaphragm heaving, bringing up acrid, searing strands of bile.

Mycroft released him, and Sherlock felt relieved to be free of the offending touch, and at the same time ached at the loss of contact.  His brother searched his face, questioning, and reached towards his cheek, stopping just shy of actually touching him—understanding.  

He tilted his face into his brother’s palm, and wept.


	11. Not Okay

_The stairs of the ambulance shifted underneath him as the paramedics moved around.  A siren wailed in the distance.  The weight of the blanket pressed against his shoulders, too warm over his coat.  Blue lights flashed rhythmically, catching the silver reflective tape on the yellow police vests._

_Why have I got this blanket? They keep putting this blanket on me._

“Sherlock?”

Lestrade’s face melted, resolved into his brother’s.  The crime scene was wiped away, replaced with the dull gray walls and green-tinged fluorescent lighting of one of Mycroft’s underground lairs.  His fingers twitched against the folds of fabric gathered under his chin.

“It’s Mycroft.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Mycroft nodded, but his eyebrows were drawn together, his lips even tighter than usual.  He had stripped to his shirtsleeves, and Sherlock noted the damp spot on his collar where he'd wiped it with a wet flannel with a small surge of satisfaction.  Ruining his brother’s suit had almost been worth the humiliation of being reduced to a heaving, blubbering mess in front of him.  Almost.

“Cigarette?” Mycroft flipped open the packet, pushed one forward with his thumb.

He reached for it, fingers trembling so violently he nearly dropped it on the floor.

Mycroft ignored his fumbling and flicked the lighter for him.

Sherlock inhaled, held the smoke in his lungs until they burned, then blew a plume upwards, slowly letting in unfurl from his cracked lips. “Unfiltered menthols.  You’ve decided I knew Jim rather better than Irene, then.”

“You’ve had an ordeal.”

He snorted, blowing smoke through his nostrils.

“Please let the medical team treat your injuries.”

“No.”  He tapped cigarette ash onto the tile floor.  It was cold beneath his bare feet.

Mycroft drew in a breath sharply, and for a moment Sherlock thought he was going to argue, but he merely said, “It is your right to refuse care, but I want to let you know that there is a competent, discrete group of physicians at our disposal.”

“Have them tend to Molly, then.”

“Already done.”

“Her neck—”

“Superficial.  She’ll have a scar.”

Sherlock sucked the cigarette down until it was too short to hold, and put his hand out for another, which Mycroft handed him without comment.  He lit the new cigarette with the first one, waving away his brother’s offered lighter, then dropped the butt on the floor, stubbing it out with his heel.  Mycroft winced.  Sherlock ignored him.  The searing, throbbing pain with each heartbeat soothed, focused him.  He’d become so accustomed to the flood of endorphins, to the demanding, insistent, _need_ of pain, that the loss of sensation had been… disorienting.

To be sure, he was still in pain.  His skin felt too tight where the cuts and abrasions were starting to close.  Every muscle in his body was either cramped, or bruised, or torn from overextension.  The worst were his shoulders; his trapezii were probably shredded.

But he realized that what had shaken him was the loss of _rhythm_.  Jim’s cuts had been methodical, predictable, following foreseeable lines.  The lashes had been percussive, each building on the other; the actual tearing of skin had been terrible, but the repetition had made it bearable, had allowed him to aclimatize to the sensations, to build the levels of neurotransmitters necessary to process the agony, to float on it.

No physical sensation had ever been so all-consuming; for however long it must have been, and it couldn’t have been long, though it had felt interminable at the time, he hadn’t been able to think.  His brain had been unable to process any input not supplied by his nociceptors—the crisp, defined, burn of opening skin, the deep, slipping protest of tearing fasciae, the bright, insistent prickle of compressed nerves.  The torture had anchored him, grounded him, bound him to his transport, and when Jim had brought him down and abandoned him, he had been lost.  

It had been much worse when the pain had subsided, when his mind had started working again, anticipating each new humiliation Jim intended for him, writing every noxious detail into his visual and muscle memory.  There would be no deleting any of it.  It  was part of the firmware, now.  Read only.

“Ms Hooper has asked to see you.”  Mycroft said, tentatively.

 _Molly, watching him,_ pitying _him, crying softly against him when Jim pushed her head into the leather to watch Sherlock’s face._ The assault itself hadn’t been so horrible.  There had been heat, and friction, and, when Jim had thrust, pain, but mostly from his shoulders as Jim fucked him into the chair; the sweat from his back had stung his open welts, the strain of the relatively simple, cruel position had cramped his muscles.

The word _no_ caught in his throat.  He sucked another drag from his cigarette.

“I informed her you might—”

“It’s fine.”  He could refuse her nothing.  He finished his second cigarette, which he put out against the table, this time, letting the butt fall to the floor, and followed Mycroft out of the door.

 

* * *

 

As soon as Mycroft’s chief physician, who introduced herself as Priya, no last name, had finished the sutures on Molly’s neck and applied a new pressure dressing, she’d asked to see Sherlock.  Mycroft and Priya had exchanged glances, and a cool, heavy feeling slid from her chest down into her belly as she realized Sherlock might not want to see her now, might never want to see her again.

“He’s... disoriented right now,” Mycroft said after a moment’s hesitation.  “I will ask him once he’s gotten his bearings.  Please do not take it personally if he declines.”

Molly nodded, feeling numb.

Mycroft left, and his PA—Anthea, Molly reminded herself—fussed over her, fluffing her pillows, tucking the tartan print fleece blanket they’d given her at the factory around her.  She’d even brought Molly’s own, fluffy bunny house slippers.  Molly was touched by the thoughtfulness of that gesture, though Anthea herself seemed discomforted in Molly’s presence, and possibly distracted.

The bed frame was standard hospital issue, though it had a plusher mattress and better sheets than they had at Bart’s.  Molly lay curled on her side; it was more comfortable than sitting, which was going to be difficult for some time.  Priya had recommended she ice her bruises, and Molly knew that was best, but the cold of the concrete had sunk through to her marrow, and ice was the last thing she wanted.

She was still wearing Sherlock’s suit jacket; one of the commandos had put it around her shoulders at the factory while the doctors had applied a pressure dressing to her neck.  It was admittedly not very warm.  Once they’d arrived at the—Molly hesitated to call it a hospital, in spite of the equipment, it was more of a bunker, really—she’d accepted the blanket they offered her, but refused to take the jacket off.  Priya had folded the lapel back to do the suturing.  They’d given her a pair of scrub trousers to put on after treating the welts with antibiotic ointment and vitamin K and wrapping them.  Molly had declined all the meds they’d offered her apart from the lignocaine which they’d injected prior to the suturing, and ibuprofen; she was coming down hard enough from the Pentothal as it was.

Anthea knocked at the door, tentatively, giving Molly warning before coming in.

“Sherlock has agreed to see you,” she said.  “I’ve brought someone else to see you, too.”

Molly was confused for a split second until she saw the nylon carrier Anthea had slung across her hip.  She shrugged out of the shoulder strap and handed the bag to Molly.  It squirmed.  “Toby!”  Molly unzipped the carrier and fished him out, pulling him to her chest and kissing the scruff of his neck, burying her nose in his tabby fur.

There was another knock at the door, and Molly sat up—it wasn’t easy, but she didn’t want to say what she’d planned lying down—and clutched Toby tighter than was probably comfortable for him.

Mycroft entered first, holding the door for Sherlock, who remained outside the threshold, like a vampire waiting to be invited in.  Molly forced herself to smile, hoping she looked reassuring.  He flinched, fingers twitching against the blanket he wore wrapped around him, but he stepped inside; his bare, dirty feet were visible beneath the toga like folds as he crossed the room.  He hadn’t let the doctors so much as touch him.  Molly’s throat burned.

Mycroft broke the ice.  “I’m so glad to see that Anthea has re-united you with your cat.”

“Yes.  Thank you.  That was very thoughtful,” she paused, realizing she hadn’t thanked Mycroft for the more important thing.  “And thank you for—” she paused, because she couldn’t very well say, ‘ _stopping Sherlock from killing himself’_ with him standing there, “—rescuing us.  I was starting to be afraid you wouldn’t come, that I’d bungled everything.”

Mycroft’s lips pulled into a smile, but it didn’t touch the tight skin around his eyes.  “You were brilliant, Molly.  It was I who—‘bungled’ things—as you put it.  I’m afraid I spent valuable hours focusing on the wrong things.  It took me far longer than it should have to review your coroner’s report and find your message.   We were so preoccupied with trying to locate Jim’s body; I’m afraid I didn’t take a close enough look at ‘Sherlock’s.’”

Sherlock frowned, forehead furrowing, looking back and forth between Mycroft and Molly with apparent confusion.  “You mean there wasn’t a decoy on the rooftop?”

It was Mycroft’s turn to look surprised.  “No.  Why, did—”

Sherlock cut him off with a curt shake of his head.  “It’s not important.”

Molly realized that she and Sherlock had never discussed what had happened on the rooftop.  He’d come to her when it was over, looking grim for reasons that had nothing to do with being covered in blood, and told her only that everything had gone according to plan.

_Do you want to make sure I’m real, Sherlock?  Want to touch me?_

Had Sherlock thought he’d killed him?  Had he stood next to her, washing his hair, showing not so much as a flicker of anxiety or remorse, thinking he’d just—shot Jim? strangled him? bashed his head into the concrete?  Not that she was in a position to judge; she had stood next to Sherlock, narrating the autopsy, slicing tissue, weighing organs, as if she hadn’t betrayed him, didn’t know that everything had in fact gone according to Jim’s plan, not his.

Mycroft gave Sherlock a long look, but didn’t press him.  “Of course, as soon as I realized you were trying to draw my attention, we made a thorough search of your flat, and located the broken collar.  You know the rest.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened in sudden understanding.  “Pet GPS tracker, of course.”  He looked at Molly with an expression she’d never seen directed at her, though occasionally she’d seen him aim that look across his microscope towards John—and only when John had been turned away from him.  Sherlock made no effort to hide his expression now, was regarding her with open admiration.  A month ago, she would have said she’d give anything for Sherlock to look at her like that.  Now, Molly ruffled the skin behind Toby’s ears and looked away.  She felt Sherlock’s eyes on her for a few moments, probing, asking a question he wouldn’t voice and she wouldn’t answer.  After a few moments, he dropped his gaze and wheeled on Mycroft.

“The timing of your rescue, however, was fortuitous.  One might almost say theatrical.  How long were you watching?”

Molly was appalled at the tone he was taking with his brother, who was clearly so filled with regret that it physically discomforted him.

Mycroft straightened, squared his shoulders.  “Once I had identified which building you were in, my first priority was to secure the perimeter.  By the time that objective had been achieved, the three of you were—close enough together that I didn’t want to risk calling the shot.  When the situation escalated, I decided the risks of waiting outweighed the risk of missing.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t think this is the time or the place—”

“Why?  Because of Molly?  Molly was there.  Molly saw everything.  Don’t patronize her with your _delicacy_.”  He spat the word.

She felt rage welling in her again, and this time, she knew why.  Because that’s what Sherlock had done; he’d patronized her, treated her like she was a shrinking mouse, a fragile flower, not someone clever enough to send a message to Mycroft, or strong enough to endure any torment Jim could devise until he arrived.

“How long!” Sherlock demanded.  “What was the first thing you saw?  What’s the first thing you have on video?”

Mycroft clenched the railing of Molly’s bed.  “You.  Ah—drinking.”

_If you spill so much as a drop, Molly will lick it off the floor.  Do you understand?_

She felt the yogurt Priya had convinced her to eat earlier coming back up, and brought her hand to her mouth, choking back vomit.  

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said, reaching towards her.

“You didn’t ask me,” was all she managed to choke past the acrid, burning taste in her throat.

He raised his hands in supplication, even though the gesture obviously torqued his shoulders.   “I had no right to try and touch you without permission.  It won’t happen again.”

Still, even after Mycroft had explained everything, Sherlock saw her, not as his ally, not as his partner, but as his _victim_.  “No.  That’s—that’s not what I meant.  And I don’t mean—the other things, either.  Jim made you do those things; it didn’t count.”

“I _raped_ you, Molly.  It _counted_.”

She squeezed Toby tightly enough that he made a small mewl of protest, and she let him go.  He jumped from her arms onto the floor, retreated under her bed.  Molly stared at her empty hands.  “No, Sherlock.  You don’t get to decide what counts and what doesn’t.  Not about this.  Not for me.”  Her voice sounded small to her, but it was steady.  “I know you’re not going to believe me, but I’m—”  she felt the word _fine_ on the tip of her tongue, but bit it back, because she _wasn’t_ fine, might never be fine again “—I can live with what happened to us, and I don’t blame you for it.”

He shook his head, incredulous.

“Don’t,” she said.  “Don’t say anything.  I asked Mycroft if I could see you because I wanted to tell you that.  Also, I wanted to tell you that I’m… negative, for everything they’ve tested me for, and… I have an IUD.  I know you didn’t—”

_I suspect, if I time it right, the combination of her death throes and my prick inside you will make you come._

Her chest constricted, and whatever she’d meant to say was lost when she let out a ragged breath. “Anyway, I thought you’d be relieved if I told you.”

He lifted his eyebrows slightly, as though surprised, and gave a small nod.  His eyes remained fixed on her, head slightly inclined, and she realized he was waiting for her to continue, to explain what she’d meant.

“I—” _I spat into you so you wouldn’t bleed when Jim raped you._  But she couldn’t say that, not in front of Mycroft, even if he had seen—and the thought that he had, that perhaps dozens of his people had watched them on helmet cams—made it hard for her to breathe.  “I never asked you to put yourself between me and Jim—and you never asked me.”

Sherlock stood, stunned, as though she had struck him.  For a moment he simply stared, eyes darkening, and then he turned his back on her.  “Would you have preferred to be in my place?” he rasped.  “Did you want _this_?” He dropped the blanket down to his waist.  It pulled his flesh where the drying blood had stuck to it, re-opening healing wounds.

Her heart faltered, as though he’d reached into her chest and squeezed it.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft warned.

“Shut up, Mycroft!” He turned around, struggling with the blanket, and, unable to get it over his shoulders again, wrapped it below them, holding it closed with his hand.  Dappled rings of petechial hemorrhaging circled his wrists, where he’d struggled against the cords.  She could see the top of the cut on his sternum; the skin around it was stained rust and crimson with drying and fresh blood, indicating the wound was continuously being pulled open by his movements.  It needed sutures.  His nakedness showed through the gap in the fleece.

“Did you want him to sodomize you?  Because there were other, more obvious—configurations—suggested by that last position.  I was _relieved_ when Jim fucked me.  I was _grateful_ , and if you had any sense, you would be, too.”

She gripped the lapels of Sherlock’s jacket, drawing her arms tightly across her chest, wrists pressing into her bruised nipples.  Tears streamed down her shame flushed cheeks.  Because Sherlock was right; if she had any common sense, or decency, or empathy, she would be able to appreciate the enormity of the sacrifice he’d made for her.

“Sherlock!”  It was an order, given with all the force a man accustomed to being obeyed could summon.  “Do not say anything else you will regret.”  Mycroft’s tone softened, but was no less commanding.

He opened his mouth, as though to argue, and then closed it, pressing his lips together tight enough to crack the skin again.  “I am sorry.”

_Forgive me._

Her remorse congealed into a lump of horror in her throat, because what sort of person lashed out at a man who had been violated, degraded, beaten, for the crime of having endured that torture for her?  “No.  I’m the one who should be sorry.  I know you only did what you thought was right.  I’m just…” she turned onto her side, drawing the blanket around her, “tired.”

“I shouldn’t have put either of you in this position,” said Mycroft.  “Apologies.”  He crouched beside her bed and scooped Toby out from underneath it, handed him back to Molly.

She pulled him into the hollow at the curve of her body and stroked him.

“We’ll give you some space, now.  Would you like me to send a nurse in?  Or Anthea?”

“No,” she said.  She didn’t want anyone to look at her, to see what a wretched, hateful mess she was.  “I’d like to sleep, now, thanks.”

He nodded, and opened the door.  Sherlock followed him from the room.

 

* * *

 

Mycroft started in on him while they were still walking down the hallway.  “If you won’t let my team treat you here, Sherlock, go home.  I’m sure John—”

His chest constricted, his diaphragm flip-flopping too much to support his breathing.   _No, not John._  He absolutely could not face John.  He’d spent the last eighteen months being compelling, enigmatic, attentive and aloof by turns, so that John’s eyes would light up when he entered a room, so that he would say words like ‘amazing,’ and ‘brilliant,’ when Sherlock made a deduction.

John respected him, admired him.  Molly’s admiration for him was done.  He had accepted that, he had _expected_ that she would hate him for what he’d done to her.  But to be rebuked for what he’d done _for_ her, for playing the game with Jim—a game she had been playing, too, and far more skillfully than he had given her credit for—was more than he could bear.  If John rebuked him, as Molly had, it would break him.

“I’m dead, remember?”

“The reason for your feigned demise has been removed.”

“Moriarty’s threats on John’s life, and Mrs Hudson’s, and Lestrade’s, were my immediate reasons for jumping, yes.”  Mycroft blinked, and Sherlock realized he hadn’t known.  He paused, troubled, then continued.  “But I intended to use my death as a cover for going after the rest of his criminal network.”

His brother recovered quickly.  “I think that particular cat is out of the bag, now.”

“I’m convinced no one, apart from the individuals who were there at the factory, knows I’m alive.  That was a private epilogue to Moriarty’s fairy tale; he’d already spun the narrative he intended to sell to the press, and his associates.  Anyrate, we can always ask Moran.”  He’d been the only survivor of the resulting shoot out, and Sherlock was certain he was somewhere in this facility; in fact, he suspected that this was where his brother had held Jim—it was underground, secure, and had a full medical staff.

“I strongly encourage you to leave that task to me.”

“I seem to recall that the last subject you interrogated learned rather more from you than you did from him.”

Mycroft’s mouth twisted, and suddenly his brother looked older than he’d ever seen him before, and Mycroft had looked old to Sherlock even when he was young.  “I suppose I deserved that.”

“You did.  But I’m more concerned with what _I_ deserve, which is answers to some of my questions.”

Moran, of course, would be a poor substitute.  What he really wanted was to question Jim, to apply all manner of ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques—studies showing that intelligence obtained through torture was unreliable be damned.  But Jim was dead, his brains splattered across the factory floor, and Sherlock had put his fingers in the entrance and exit wounds, this time, to be sure.

“Very well.  But let me help you, Sherlock.  Especially if you want to expunge Moriarty’s network.  I already know some of the names of both his associates and clients.”

“You want to help me, Mycroft?  Give me the names.  Give me cash, weapons, passports.  Also painkillers, and—” his breath hitched, “—anti-retrovirals.”

He’d submit to a blood draw for Molly, although he was certain of his status—at least, he had been, before.  He wouldn’t know if he’d sero-converted for another week or three, even with the most sensitive and expensive antigen tests, which Mycroft would try to goad him into.  Sherlock wasn’t sure he wanted to know—Jim was clearly reckless with his own life—and he was prepared to fight Mycroft over the matter.

Mycroft blinked at him.  “Sherlock, if you needed the last, I would have told you.  They’re most effective if administered within an hour after exposure, and it’s past that.”

“How—”

“I tested Moriarty.”

Sherlock laughed out loud, so hard that he had to lean against the wall to steady himself.  As infuriatingly dense as his brother had been throughout the whole Jim debacle, there were moments when Mycroft was, in fact, smarter than him.  He would die before admitting this to him.

Mycroft watched him with apparent, mounting concern.  “You should take a course of antibiotics—for the wounds,” he added hastily, “not STIs.  I think Moriarty was more fastidious in general than his behavior towards you might have made you believe.  I am not providing you with any narcotics.”

His lips twitched.  “The menthols are the end of the line, then?”

“You can have Paracetamol and NSAIDs.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “I’d rather have another fag, thanks.”

Mycroft removed the packet from his jacket pocket and extracted another cigarette.

Sherlock let his brother light it for him again.  “Thank you,” he said, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth.

To his surprise, Mycroft lit one for himself.  “Anytime.”

The two of them leaned against the wall and smoked together in silence.


	12. Everything You Think I Am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was deep enough into this fic to know where it was going when the first [BBC Official Teaser Trailer for Series 3](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llGXWICGsD4) came out, but I couldn’t resist incorporating a little of that into this chapter.  I do not think anything in here could be considered a ‘spoiler,’ since that trailer tells us nothing, and in any case this fic is quite obviously cannon divergent, so my take on these few frames will have nothing to do with whatever they actually mean in the coming episodes, I’m sure.  But I do know some people who are avoiding even the mention of the episode titles, if you are one of those people, you might want to wait.

Molly stood in the locker room, wondering if the blouse she’d brought to change into was fancy enough and if she should put on lipstick.  She checked her reflection in the mirror, hoping she didn’t look too haggard, and saw another face behind her; gaunt, all angles, coat collar turned up and a scarf around his neck, dark hair falling into pale eyes.  She slammed the door of her locker shut, fingers clawed against it, her heart pounding.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock stammered, raising his palms above his head—a gesture he’d made before, the last time, when everything they’d tried to say to one another had come out wrong.

“You frightened me.”  She pulled on the lapels of her lab coat, folding her arms over her chest.

“I should have alerted you.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

Not _that_ again.  Molly twisted the ends of her hair with her fingers.  As had become her habbit, she wore it in a loose braid over her right shoulder, covering the worst of the scar on her neck.  She told everyone she had been mugged; Mycroft had arranged a fake police report and everything.  He’d apologized for the subterfuge, but Molly had been relieved.  Jim was dead, and she’d been glad not to have to go through a trial.  “I didn’t—I thought I’d never see you again.”

His lips twitched. “Would you have preferred that?”

She had asked herself that question too many times to count over the past three years, and knew the answer was, resoundingly, “No.”  She realized she’d said it out loud, and with more force than she’d intended.  She paused.  “I just… didn’t expect to see you, is all.  I’m—it’s good that you’re back.”  She smiled, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt.

He frowned.  Apparently, it did.

“Have you been to see John?”

“No.”

“Oh.  I guess I thought you’d go to him, first.”

“I didn’t want you to be taken off guard.  Apparently I failed.”

“Apparently.”  It was meant to sound pithy but fell flat to her ears.

He hunched slightly, chastened.  “Coffee?”

_Black, two sugars, please.  I’ll be upstairs._

“Um.  I’ve got a lunch date.  With Mycroft, actually—”

His eyes widened.

“Not like that!” Heat rushed to her face.  “I took what you said to heart, you know, about avoiding a relationship,” she pitched her voice as deep as possible, “‘for the sake of law and order.’”  It was bad.  She knew it was bad.  Sherlock would make a comment about impressions not being her area.

He was silent.

“Mycroft—checks on me, sometimes.  Takes me someplace posh, asks about my work, and Toby.”  Had she just mentioned Toby to Sherlock?  She had, hadn’t she?  She sat down on the bench in front of the lockers.

“How is the work?” he asked.

“Well actually, there was a murder suicide last week, or at least, that’s what Anderson said, but based on the placement of the gunpowder residue I think the ‘suicide’ fired the gun at something or someone else, first, and was shot in the head by someone else, after.  I told Greg as much.  Have you seen Greg?”

He blinked at her.

God, but he must think her simple.  Hadn’t he just told her she was the first person she’d spoken to?  How was it that Sherlock still turned her into a dithering idiot?

“Greg?” he asked.

It was her turn to blink.  “Greg Lestrade.  The DI.  I thought you were close.”

“Oh!  Yes, of course.  I've seen him.  He hasn’t seen me, though.”  Sherlock smiled, and pulled a police badge out of the pocket of his greatcoat and handed it to her.

The shield was cool and heavy in her palm.  “Is this—”

“Lestrade’s, yes.  I pickpocket him when he’s annoying.”

“You’ve been gone for three years.  What’s he done to annoy you?”

“Well, he hasn’t sacked Anderson, for one thing.”

Molly giggled again, and then forced herself to stop, because this was ridiculous.  She looked at the clock.  12:26.  “Mycroft will be sending a car for me.  Would you like to come with?  I’m sure it would be fine—”

“No,” he said, sharply.  “Thank you,” he added, in a softer tone, “but I don’t think I could handle my brother scrutinizing us just now.”

“Oh.”  Molly suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted Mycroft scrutinizing her, now, either.  He’d been good to her over the years, and clearly meant well, but in some ways he made her more nervous than Sherlock ever had.  “Maybe I should cancel—”

“Would you?” His features were lopsided, young.

Molly took out her mobile and sent a quick text to the number she’d memorized three and a half years ago:

> Really sorry, something has come up.  Rain check?

The reply was almost immediate:

> Something?  Or someone?  My brother, perhaps?

She scowled, and shoved the phone back into her handbag.  “He knows.”

“Yes.  That’s probably why he wanted to see you, actually.  To warn you about me.”

A little warning might have been welcome, actually, but she wasn’t going to say that to Sherlock.  “You’ve kept in touch with him, then?”

“We were working together.  And our work is done, now.”

“Oh.”  She felt oddly disappointed she wasn’t the first person to know Sherlock was returning to London, after all.

“You—cancelling on Mycroft.  Does this mean you’ll let me buy you coffee?”

“No,” she smiled, teasing.

His face fell.

Why did she always try to joke with Sherlock?  It backfired, every time.  “You’re buying me lunch, and something more substantial than crisps.  I was counting on Mycroft feeding me.  I’m starved.”

“Oh,” the light returned to his eyes.  “I know a good Indian place.  They have a brilliant curry.  Do you like curry?”

“I’d prefer palak paneer, actually.”

“Also excellent.”  Sherlock took his mobile out of his coat pocket.  “I’m texting you the address.  Will you meet me there in half an hour?  I’ve got to be discreet about leaving Bart’s; too many people might recognize me.”  And with that, and a dramatic swish of his coat, he slipped out of the room.  The gesture felt smaller, somehow, than when she’d seen him make it before.

Molly stared at her fingers, shaking against her lab coat.  She was sure what he said about being spotted was true—she wondered how he’d gotten to the locker room, actually, but then, he was Sherlock—but she was equally sure that wasn’t the only reason he’d asked her to meet him.  He was offering her an out, an opportunity to stand him up.

She considered taking it.  This was very likely to end in tears, almost certainly hers.  She’d spent three years talking to herself, Toby, and Jean—the therapist Mycroft had recommended and paid for—about what she would say, if she ever saw Sherlock again, but none of the scenarios she’d imagined had involved Indian food.

She sighed, and took off her coat, opening her locker and hanging it inside next to the blouse which she went ahead and changed into to stall for time.  If she didn’t go, she’d spend the next three years, or possibly more, fretting about all the things she might have said.  Molly looked in the mirror one last time, still seeing that other face, pale and shadowed.  She decided against the lipstick.

* * *

 

Sherlock had thought of dozens of ways in which he could attempt to reintegrate himself into his former life, all of which had a single feature in common: Molly must be the first person to whom he revealed himself.  She had been the first person who had known about his feigned death, she would be the first person who would know about his return to the living—excepting Mycroft, who had been the one to urge his return.  His reunion with Molly was the one for which the stakes were highest; if he succeeded with her, his victory would give him strength to go through with the others, and if he failed, at least he would know he could sink no lower.

His elation that she’d agreed to join him for lunch had devolved into thrumming terror once he was confronted with the reality of her across the table.  His eyes darted over the thin pink scar she tried to cover with her hair, the way she set her left arm on the table, placing it between him and her body while she ate with her right.  She practically squirmed under his gaze when he tried to read her body language, however, so he dropped his eyes to his white porcelain bowl, full of untouched curry.

“Have you thought about what you’ll say to John?”  She asked, abruptly.

An average of 3.6 times per day for 1,137 days and nights. “Yes”  He stirred his soup to buy himself a few moments, trying to decide how honest he could afford to be.  “I’m a skilled liar, Molly.”

She had taken a sip of mango lassi while he stirred his curry, and nearly choked on it.

“That surprises you—not that I know I am, but that I said it.”

She coughed, wiping her lips with a white linen napkin.  “You always did say what was on your mind.”

He frowned.  “I don’t, though.  I can see how it would appear that I have no filter, but I do actually keep many of my thoughts to myself, especially where John is concerned.  If you count the lies of omission in addition to the active prevarications, I’ve lied to John more times than I care to remember.”  He’d told John he was going for milk when he’d met Moriarty at the pool with the Bruce Partington plans.  He’d told John Moriarty hadn’t touched anything in their flat, when he’d carved the first of many IOU threats into the apple.  Most unforgivably, he’d told John ‘goodbye,’ when he’d known he would do everything in his power to return.

“It should be easy, to tell one more lie to John.  But I can’t.  And I can’t tell him the truth, either.  And so I’ve hidden from him for three years.”  He still marveled at how brilliantly Moriarty had succeeded at severing him from John, without in any way striking at John himself.  He had burdened Sherlock with a secret that wasn’t his to share, and which he couldn’t have confided in John even if it were.  

“I thought you said you were working—”

“I was.  The strongest lies are based on truth.  Jim understood that.”

Molly took a sip of water, and then pulled herself straighter, he could see by the way she brought her chest forward and put her shoulders back that she’d untwisted her legs under the table and set her feet flat on the floor.  “You’re not like Jim.”

His lip quirked.  “Quite right.  He’s dead.”

“John will understand why you—died.”

“Of course he will.  That’s an easy lie to forgive, an easy motivation to understand.  Who wouldn’t jump off a rooftop to save their friends?”

Molly tilted her head, arched an eyebrow.

“That was a rhetorical question—I can think of a number of individuals readily.  But John isn’t one of them.  That’s the important thing.”

She pushed at her food with a piece of naan.  “If you know he’ll forgive you—”

“For _jumping_ , Molly.  He’d forgive me for our supposed ‘final’ conversation, for watching him in the distance while he stood at my grave; he might even forgive me for choosing you as my confidant instead of him.”

Her ears turned pink.

“He will never forgive me for being gone for three years, for leaving him behind to chase dangers alone which we should have confronted together.”

“If you—”

If he told John that he had raped Molly, that Jim had raped him?  If he spun John’s emotional roulette wheel, watched and waited to see on what expression his face would land—revulsion, horror, pity?  Sherlock had tried to do a risk assessment on that one, and had found the task impossible; he had been unable to assign relative values to the possible outcomes, to decide which of John’s most likely responses would be worse.

Molly watched his face for a moment and arrived at the same conclusion.  “—but you can’t.”

“As I’ve already explained.”

“So what will you tell him?”

“That Moriarty’s death created a power vacuum.  That Mycroft and I had the perfect opportunity to strike while they were disorganized.  That it was dangerous, and I knew I might not survive, and even I wasn’t callous enough to make my friends mourn me twice.”

It was true; he had spent the last three years crossing names of the list Sebastian Moran, under duress, had given them, and several times his survival had been a very near thing—he’d gained a concave, purple scar between his ninth and tenth ribs and lost most of his spleen.  It was also a lie; he could have revealed himself to John immediately after Moriarty’s death, would have, if it hadn’t terrified him more than the thought of dying alone and unmourned.

“Do you think he’ll accept that?”

“Of course not.  It’s a terrible excuse.  It won’t make sense to him and he’ll hate me for it.”  It was easier to say those words out loud than he had thought it would be.  “I can accept his hatred.  I can bear that.  I always told John I wasn’t a hero, and the last two years have made me—more comfortable, with the role of villain.”

Molly’s eyes narrowed, and she leaned back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest.  “You’d rather play the villain, wouldn’t you?”  There was an edge in her voice, of reproach, or anger.  “It’s easier than admitting you were also a victim.”

He felt his fingers clench around his spoon, and he set it down, delicately, at the side of his bowl.  He certainly wasn’t unaware that Jim had violated him, though victim was not a word he cared to associate with himself.  He had survived, although he wasn’t always convinced that was a good thing, and he’d done it by becoming harder, darker, than Molly knew, possibly than she could understand.  The first man he’d killed had been in São Paulo, and that had been a matter of being the quicker draw, of shooting so he wouldn’t be shot.  The last man he’d killed had been in Odessa, and _that_ had been a tactical maneuver; the man had been a sentry, and Sherlock had crept up behind him and driven the point of his knife between the man’s skull and his cervical spine.

The dream he’d had that night had been one of the worst.  His nightmares were always iterations on what had happened, or what he’d feared would happen, in the factory, and in that one his and Jim’s places had been reversed; he’d fucked Jim into the chair with his right hand behind Molly’s ear and his left under her jaw, twisting upwards and back at the moment of climax.  That horror had been surpassed only by the phantasm that had come over him during his fit of loneliness and ennui in Kiev, which had shaken him so badly he’d thrown aside all logic and self-preservation and sought out Irene Adler.

Molly continued, unaware of the virulence that had come over him.  “You’ve been telling yourself that you can’t bear John’s pity, or his revulsion, but the truth is, you know if he knew, he’d forgive you.  And you can’t bear to be forgiven.  You want John to hate you, as punishment for what you did to me.  And that’s—you can’t make amends to me by hurting John.”

He sighed.  “I deserve neither such blame nor such credit.  I make no pretensions to atonement.  And I’m far more motivated by simple fear of rejection than you seem to think.  Still, what you said was—not entirely wrong.”

But not quite right, either.  Two years ago, at the King’s Cross inn, in a fit of self-doubt and wretchedness, he’d told John he didn’t have _friends_ —‘only one’—he’d amended, in his subsequent apology.  Moriarty had illustrated how badly he’d miscalculated on that front to devastating effect, Sherlock had been paying for his mistake from the moment Jim had said ‘everyone.’  Still, while he felt respect for Lestrade, affection for Mrs Hudson, it had only ever been John’s opinion of him that mattered.  He had jumped off a building for the others, but he could stomach their disapproval  No, he realized he now had the data he needed to make his risk assessment, that John’s forgiving him would be the most likely, and the worst, of all possible outcomes, because he couldn’t bear John forgiving him and it not being _enough_.  It wasn’t John’s forgiveness he wanted.

Molly smiled ruefully, and said the words he’d anticipated as soon as she’d begun this line of thought, against which he’d struggled in vain to brace himself.  “Well, if it makes you feel better, I haven’t forgiven you.”

It didn’t.  It made all his limbs feel leaden, lit the back of his throat on fire, drove the air from his lungs.  “But you came.”  It sounded like a protest rather than an observation.

“There were things I needed to say.”

“Such as?”

“You knew I loved you,” she said, without looking at him.

“Yes—though not for as long as you might believe.  I knew you fancied me from the beginning.  I deduced it was more than that three years ago Christmas, but I didn’t realize the extent of your devotion,” or his own unworthiness of it, “until…”

“Did—” she was trembling now, fingers clenched around her glass, whether from dread or rage he wasn’t sure.  “Did you ever—did you mean _anything_ —when you said—”

“ _You_.”  He made no attempt to keep the rawness from his voice, the desperation off his face, laying himself bare before her, as he had, that night, when he’d told her what he thought he needed, before he’d known how true his words would come to be.

She nodded.

He held her gaze and told her the truth he owed her, which would wreck her, which would wreck him to tell.  “Yes.  But I didn’t know _how_ I meant it, until it was too late.”

* * *

 

Everything in her spilled over then, because it was the worst and best thing he could have said, the thing she had most wanted and dreaded to hear.  She told him her truth, her lie—that she hadn’t forgiven him.  She knew it hadn’t been his fault, that he’d done everything he could to protect her.  And yet she blamed him—or her body did, on a primal level, and without asking her permission.  But if he had just _lied_ , if he had told her that he had meant what he said, that he’d bleed for her because he loved her, and not out of some twisted sense of obligation, it might have made it all right.

Instead, he’d said—what?  That he’d manipulated her before, but that he cared for her now?  What exactly was she supposed to do with the love of a man whose every glance made her feel as though he’d unzipped her skin?

“Thank you,” she said at last.  “For your honesty.”  The word curdled in her her throat.  She reached for her water glass, but her fingers shook so violently that she knocked it over, spilling it over the white tablecloth.

_The water spilled from the bottle over the concrete, pooling between her bruised knees._

Sherlock’s eyes were still locked on hers, but she found herself looking into the lines around them, the bruises underneath them, instead of into those open wounds.  She snatched the glass and set it up upright to save what little water was left, dabbed furiously at the spreading stain with a napkin, glancing furtively at the other diners; she hadn’t come here to make a scene.

“Do the same for John, will you?”  Her voice was steadier than she would have believed possible.  It sounded like someone else’s voice, heard from high above and far away.  “Tell him the truth.”

“Molly—” he began, then stopped, staring forward, lips parted, head tilted as though straining to hear a distant sound.

She stood up, dropping the wadded napkin onto the table.  Her knees felt unsteady, and she put both her palms down, leaning against her fingertips.

Sherlock pulled his left hand from under his chin, and reached for her palm on the table.  He retracted his hand mid gesture, and coiled his fingers into a fist, dropping it to the tablecloth with enough force that the water in their glasses trembled.

“I think I should go,” she said, and gathered her coat and bag, pausing for a last look at him, straight backed and slender in his navy suit, staring into his bowl.  Molly thrust her arms through the sleeves of her coat as she walked away, and didn’t look back.

 


	13. The Present at the Top of the Bag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some discussion of long term injury and how it affects our ability to do what we love. Thanks to Prurient_curiosity for helping me through writing this, and for reminding me that it merited a warning.

Sherlock stood in front of the fireplace in the drawing room, watching Mycroft, who was seated in his armchair and sipping the cognac Sherlock had given him, out of the corner of his eye.  He’d come across a bottle of Cuvée 3.128 in the last safe house they’d destroyed, in Odessa.  It had earned him a raised eyebrow and a nod of appreciation, and the removal of the best double old fashioned glasses from the cabinets of heirloom crystal.

Sherlock abandoned the two finger widths Mycroft had poured for him on the mantel in favor his violin. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring it; an irrational concession to sentiment, brought on by memories of 221B three years before: the mantel and cow skull decked in fairy lights, John and Lestrade with drinks in hand, Mrs Hudson praising his playing and regretting that he hadn’t worn antlers, snow falling fast behind lace curtains.

He had played only sporadically since his return to London, and never in front of company.  His practice sessions inevitably ended with him cursing the tension in his shoulders and the effervescent sparkles of pain which worked their way up his left arm and out through the tips of his fingers like champagne bubbles rising and popping in a glass.  Still, his former skill hadn’t entirely deserted him, and he felt confident in his ability to play a few Christmas carols.

The combined light of the fire and the overhead chandelier reflected back at him from the warm patina as he tucked it under his chin.  He ran the bow over the A string, turning the peg forward and back slowly until the sound settled at 440 hz, then adjusted the other strings until he heard clear open fifths.  Perfect pitch—he’d had it since he was a boy—had been as baffled to discover other people couldn’t name notes as he would have been if they’d been unable to name colors.  That sense was intact, which was both a blessing and a curse.

His fingers navigated through ‘Greensleeves,’ more or less from muscle memory, and where that faltered, his ear filled in and guided his hand.  The acoustics of the drawing room were lovely; it had been a favorite practice spot of his as a boy.  He’d played for hours, eyes closed, inhaling the books, which smelled of old paper and leather, feeling the Persian carpets under his bare toes.  The muscles between his shoulderblades twinged when he crossed his bow arm to the lower strings.

Sherlock ignored the pain, focusing on the melody, bending it, shaping it, weaving his own improvisations through the familiar tune, and the rendition was acceptable; the superior timbre of the instrument made up for some of the deficiences of the player, lending more sweetness to his tone than his technique should have allowed.  But although the notes were the proper pitch, the _feel_ of them under his fingertips was wrong.  He knew he was exerting too much pressure, dampening the vibrations, killing the bumblebees his violin tutor had told him lived under the fingerboard.  

The lack of resonance would be noticeable only to trained ears, such as his own—or his brother’s.  Mycroft stared into his glass, his face impassive.  Sherlock had once delighted in offending his brother’s ears, deliberately producing cacophonous, dissonant sounds.  To offend him inadvertently troubled him beyond words.  His eyes drifted towards the beveled glass windows, his ears reached for the crunch of gravel under tyres, signalling the arrival of a car in the drive.

Mycroft tilted his head to the side again, silently asking the question he’d been annoying Sherlock with all evening.   _Are you certain?_    

He gave his brother a curt nod, and when the front doorbell rang Mycroft answered it himself; he’d given the staff the evening off, but not before they’d prepared a lavish dinner which sat under domes on the long table in front of the drawing room windows—Sherlock had convinced him the dining room would be ridiculous with only four of them.  He turned his back to the door, facing the mantel, and continued to play, deviating almost entirely from the melody and into a cadenza, finishing with a flourish when he heard them enter the room, holding the bow in the air for a dramatic moment.  He turned around to applause, to John and Mary clapping and smiling, delighted by the gesture, oblivious to the pain it had caused him.

“Hullo,” Sherlock said, depositing his violin on the mantle and trading it for the cognac.  He took the glass up with his right hand, absently clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left.

“Merry Christmas, Sherlock,” said Mary, smiling in a way that crinkled the corners of her eyes and pushed up the flesh of her cheeks, flushed pink with cold.  John stood beside her, and a shopping bag full of presents sat between them.

Mycroft crossed the room to help Mary out of her coat.  “Welcome, and Merry Christmas.”

Sherlock inclined his head.  “Good to see you both again under less stressful circumstances.”

Mary grinned.  “Come now, it was actually rather fun.”  She was sincere, Sherlock could see it in the sparkle of her eyes, and that, of course, was why there’s a sparkle on the third finger of her left hand as well.

He cocked his head towards John, “When were you intending to tell me?”

John raised his eyebrows, his lips spreading into a slow grin.  “I assumed you would have worked it out.”

“I had, of course,” he lied.  He’d been rather more concerned with other things at the time.  “But I would have appreciated being confided in, all the same.”

John chuckled.  “I’d say I’d remember that for next time, but—”

Mary rolled her eyes.

“—You’ll have to settle for being my best man.  I’m trusting you to make a toast in front of all my friends and relations without deducing all of the familial drama.  How’s that for confidence?”

Sherlock took a sip of cognac, his throat suddenly dry.  “That’s—” a position reserved for one’s best friend, a title he’d relinquished all claim to when he’d swan dived off the pathology lab and which he hadn’t permitted himself to hope would ever be his again. “—extraordinarily brave of you.”  He did his best to make his voice droll, but knew instantly he’d failed.

Mary broke the awkward silence with her accustomed ease.  “Mycroft, thank you so much for inviting us.”  She reached into the bag on the floor and extracted a festively decorated tin.  “I’ve brought bon bons and biscuits.”

“Thank you, Ms Morstan.”

“Mary, please.”

“You do know the way to my brother’s heart,” Sherlock smirked.

“We’ve brought some presents as well,” John added.  “Where shall we put them?”

“By the fireplace is fine,” said Mycroft.

“My brother drew the line at a tree.  I think you’ll find roast goose and bread sauce are about the only holiday traditions in which he’s willing to take part—unless you count Christmas pudding.”

“Roast goose sounds fine by me,” said John.

Mycroft imparted pleasantries and took the opportunity to herd everyone to the table.

 

* * *

 

After the pudding had been eaten—Sherlock had managed two slices, if only because Mycroft had abstained but eyed it longingly—they returned to the fireplace for the threatened gift exchange.

John handed parcels to both Mycroft and Sherlock, and while Sherlock opened his—it was obviously a book—he found his eyes moving towards John’s shopping bag.  There had been a smaller present wrapped in green with an elaborate gold bow, which had been at the top of the bag so as not to be crushed, and John had picked it up to remove the other parcels and set it down inside the bag again instead of taking it out.

“ _Cosmos_ ,” Sherlock said, waving the book with a smile and a roll of his eyes.

“The perfect book for a genius who was unaware that the earth orbits the sun.”  John smiled.

“I have taken steps to expand my knowledge since then, you know.  But thank you.”

For Mycroft, there was a handsome paperweight, no doubt of Mary’s choosing, and which would be nicely suited for any of his offices.  Sherlock tuned out his brother’s appreciative noises, eyes still on the shopping bag.

But John didn’t say anything and Sherlock didn’t ask; instead he brought their own gifts out of the cupboard.  A dark brown cashmere jumper for John, which Sherlock had selected and which suited him far better than the ones he normally wore, though he noted that Mary seemed to have had a positive influence on his dress sense; she’d managed to get him into a blazer, which was in season and cut in a way that actually fit him.  The small box Mycroft handed Mary contained an elegant set of gold earrings that complimented her skin tone—refined, but not so expensive as to make her feel uncomfortable accepting them.  Anthea’s selection, he was certain.

“Oh, almost forgot,” said John, reaching for the green present.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at the transparent lie.

“Molly asked me to bring this to you.”

All the air went out of the room.  John extended the gift with an air of feigned nonchalance Sherlock found himself unable to match as he took the parcel with trembling fingers, painfully aware of Mycroft’s sharp eyes on him, John’s rigid posture, Mary’s hand brushing his arm—had John told her?  Would he keep no secrets from her, even for Sherlock?  Or was she simply picking up on his unease with her infallible intuition?  He wished he could, as he had three years ago, sequester himself in his room, open his present in privacy.

He avoided the tag, still haunted by the words he’d read three years ago:

_—Dearest Sherlock, Love Molly, XXX_

They had twisted like barbs in his entrails when he’d first read them, when he’d first understood how cruelly he’d wounded Molly, when he’d told everyone the feelings she’d meant to share only with him.

_You always say such horrible things. Every time._

_How positively_ unchivalrous _of him._

He brought the box to his ear and shook it lightly.  “Cuff links,” he said, adding, reflexively—defensively, “all my shirts have buttons,” knowing even as he said it that he would be buying a double cuffed shirt.

Keenly feeling three pairs of eyes, he turned the tag over carefully.

 

> To Sherlock, From Molly

He had known there would be no more notes expressing the affection he’d rebuffed when it had been his.  It had been unreasonable to hope it could be otherwise, and would be unseemly to brood over it.

He pulled the wire stiffened gold bow and tossed it to the floor with elaborate casualness, tearing through the foil.  A simple black paperboard jewelry box was underneath.  He flipped it open, removing the cotton wadding, revealing a pair of sterling silver cufflinks adorned with bisected human molars.  He felt the smile curling on his lips before he was conscious of having moved his muscles.  John relaxed visibly, returned Mary’s reassuring touch.  Mycroft took a sip of cognac.  Sherlock breathed again.

 

* * *

 

Molly giggled, and struggled to keep the paper crown her nieces had insisted she wear on her head as she ducked; the two of them were throwing a Christmas cracker back and forth over the head of their younger brother, who was racing back and forth across the sitting room and jumping desperately to try and catch it.  

“No running in the house!” their mother admonished.

“Sorry, Mum,” they said in chorus, chastened, and the two girls pulled the cracker apart, and their brother snatched the middle portion as it fell, dropping to his knees and brandishing it above his head triumphantly.

The commotion was such Molly almost missed the chiming of her mobile.  She only caught it because a part of her brain had been straining for it all evening.  Molly fumbled through her knitting bag, pushing aside her half finished scarf and balls of yarn, and glanced at the screen without taking it out.

> Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper

She felt the brush of warm lips on her cheek, recalling the only kiss Sherlock had given her which she could think about without flinching.

_I am sorry. Forgive me._

Her eyes stung, and her throat swelled, and her fingers shook too badly to tap out a response.  But she did.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading this story. It was, at times, difficult to write, and I imagine also to read. Thank you for sticking with me.
> 
> Comments are appreciated, and squealed over, and I do my best to respond coherently.


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